


Out of the Fire

by gammadolphin



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Adventure, Angst, Drama, Episode: s07e13 The Slice Girls, Episode: s08e19 Taxi Driver, Episode: s08e23 Sacrifice, Family, Gen, Human Castiel, Hurt/Comfort, Purgatory, Season/Series 08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-16
Updated: 2013-08-03
Packaged: 2017-12-20 09:54:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/885877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gammadolphin/pseuds/gammadolphin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma was having a perfectly ordinary day of fighting for her life in Purgatory when she decided to investigate the rumored new portal to hell on a whim. Nothing could have prepared her for having a ragged, scruffy, tortured man pop climb out of it, desperate for a way back to earth after centuries spent locked in the Cage, but that was what she got.</p><p>Not quite sure what to make of each other, Emma and Adam must set aside their differences and work together to make it out alive, back to the family that they share. On the way, the two almost-Winchesters will encounter familiar faces and impossible challenges, all while figuring out what it means to be family.</p><p>Fits into season 8 canon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story came from an idea that has been floating around in my brain for a while. I have always been dissatisfied by how Emma and Adam’s individual storylines were ended, and I was disappointed that we did not get to see Emma again in the Purgatory storyline. Then Sam left the door to hell open in Taxi Driver, and this fic kind of took off.
> 
> I took the title of this from what Pamela said to Dean in Lazarus Rising. “Out of the fire and back in the frying pan, huh?” I figured that it fit pretty well.

Emma did not know what to expect as she cautiously approached the dark vortex between the rocks. She had never seen it before, and Purgatory had taught her to distrust the unknown. But this dark chasm at the river’s edge seemed harmless enough. She had heard whispers that it led to hell, but she was not sure she believed that. She had only spent one day on earth, the rest of her existence carved out in this eternal cagefight that was Purgatory. She knew very little of the heaven or hell that some of her victims had spoken of; only that they were reserved for human souls and that hell was supposedly worse even than this place.

Emma was leaning in closer to the portal by the water when she saw a grimy hand begin to emerge from the inky depths. Her instincts, born of a life of combat, propelled her into action. She swung the crude axe that she had removed from the dead hand of one of her first victims. The filthy limb that she had been aiming at was snatched hastily away, and Emma’s axe clashed against the rock of the gateway.

Suddenly the body that the hand belonged to came shooting out of the gaping chasm. The young man slammed into Emma, knocking her backwards into the dirt of the riverbank. She swung her weapon again, but her opponent ducked out of the way incredibly fast. He brought his arm up to meet hers, and she felt the crack of her bones. She let out a gasp that was too proud to become a scream as the axe dropped from her numb fingers.

The sweat-soaked and hell-worn young man snatched up the fallen weapon, holding it to Emma’s throat before she had the chance to attack him again. The young Amazon grew still.

“Look,” said the man, barely even breathing hard. “I have seen way too much crap lately, way too many bodies ripped apart. I don’t want to kill you.”

He stared at her for a long moment. Emma was seething, furious that a mere man had taken her out so easily. She had no intention of letting him live after this offence. Her opponent could clearly see this fact in her eyes. He sighed.

“Look,” he said again. “The way I see it, I have no reason to fight you, you have no reason to fight me. That seems like it should add up to us not fighting.”

When Emma continued to glower at him belligerently, he sighed once again in frustration, running his free hand through his short dirty blond hair.

“Fine. How about we start with names? Mine’s Adam. Adam Milligan. I grew up in Michigan until I got eaten by ghouls, resurrected, possessed by an archangel, and pulled into the deepest corner of hell. You?”

Emma’s hatred was temporarily forgotten in the midst of her disbelief.

“You have got to be kidding,” she said.

Adam gave the ghost of a smile, pleased that he had finally coaxed some words from her.

“I wish I were kidding,” he said ruefully. “My life, death, whatever, would have been a lot easier; but no, I am completely serious.”

“So angels, hell, heaven; all that really exists?” asked Emma, curious despite herself.

Confusion flashed across the man’s features.

“You don’t know about hell?” he asked uncertainly. “I just assumed that you were guarding the exit; and that’s why you attacked me. I don’t think I was supposed to get out.”

“No, I was just in the area and there was talk about a new portal, so naturally I thought I’d check it out; see if it led to earth. Apparently it goes somewhere much worse than here.”

Emma did not realize how much hope had risen in her chest at the prospect of a way out. But the pain of realizing that she had only found the doorway to another cage, not freedom, told her just how foolishly optimistic she had been.

“What do you mean, a portal to earth?” Emma had almost forgotten about the man who was still holding an axe to her throat. “Aren’t we there now?”

Emma snorted.

“I wish, buddy,” she said, with less derision than she had intended. “I’m afraid you’ve just landed your ass in Purgatory. Welcome, and all that. Just so you know, everyone here will try to kill you.”

She finally remembered that fact herself. The pain in her arm flared up, and her anger along with it. But Adam still had her pinned. And…She considered him briefly. He looked tough; he had clearly seen his fair share of action and come out the other side. Hell, he had taken her out in fifteen seconds flat, despite the superhuman strength that she possessed. Her last partner had been killed two weeks ago, and she had been forced to be even more vigilant since then. This man might make a useful ally.

Of course, if he was going to help her, he would have to catch up first.

“I’m sorry, but what’s Purgatory?” he asked.

“You know about monsters, right?” Emma began. She had only given this talk once, but it had not been to a human. “You must; you said you were eaten by a ghoul.”

Adam winced at the memory, but nodded.

“Well every soul goes somewhere after death. Human souls on the nice list get sent upstairs to heaven. But humans on the naughty list, or who manage to piss off someone with pull, get the hell treatment instead.”

She had never really believed that, but Adam was living proof that both places existed. She glanced over him again, noting the sunken cheeks, hollow and washed out blue eyes, and faint map of scars stretching across every inch of exposed skin. He had probably been attractive once, but whatever torment he had gone through had pared him down into a shadow.

“I guess you’re familiar with that one,” she added softly.

Adam just gave another tight nod.

“Anyway, heaven and hell are for human souls. Purgatory is for all of the non-human souls. We get sent here, regardless of our deeds. And it’s basically a 24-7 deathmatch. You with me so far?”

“I think so,” said Adam slowly. “So you’re a dead monster?”

Emma bristled, but then let out a dry chuckle.

“Yeah, I guess I am,” she said ruefully. “I’m an Amazon. And yes, we do exist. All of the newer souls give me crap because they thought we were just a legend. So I rip them to pieces to show them just how real I am.”

Adam raised an eyebrow.

“So who got you then, if you’re so tough?” he asked.

Emma glowered at him.

“I was only a day old at the time,” she said defensively. “Amazons reach maturity within 36 hours of birth, but we’re not truly part of the sisterhood until we complete our first task; which is to kill our father.”

“Nice,” interrupted Adam sarcastically. There was no real judgment in his face though. He had seen too much, done too much for that.

“It was all I knew,” said Emma softly. “Anyway, my father was a hunter; the supernatural kind that goes after monsters, not the kind that shoots woodland creatures for sport, so I knew that it would be tough. But he knew who I was too. He didn’t want to kill his own daughter, even though he thought I was a monster. He wanted to let me go, but I wanted to complete my mission. I’ll never know who would have won that fight though, because my father’s brother came in and shot me before I could try to talk to him too. So I ended up here.”

She shrugged.

“I was shunned by the other Amazons because I never completed my initiation, so I wasn’t technically part of the sisterhood. I had to figure everything out on my own, and fast. So…I did. I seem to have pretty good instincts and reflexes; courtesy of my father, I guess.”

Adam was staring at her in silence as she finished speaking. He seemed to be speculating about something.

“Your dad and his brother were hunters?” he asked at last.

“Yeah, why?”

“Do you know their names?” he ignored her question.

“My father was Dean Winchester, and I was killed by his brother, Sam. My name’s Emma, by the way.”

She did not understand the strange look that Adam was giving her, so she ignored it.

“Look, I’m going to lay it out for you,” she said. “I lost my backup, and you seem like you would be good in a fight. I could use you. And good fighter or not, you’ll get torn to shreds out there without my help. You’re human; you weren’t built for this place. It’ll eat you alive unless you have someone like me to show you the ropes and watch your back.”

“So you want to work together?” Adam clarified.

“Yeah.”

“Don’t Amazons hate men?”

Emma let out a surprised laugh.

“Yeah, I guess they do,” she said. “But you know what? I don’t care what the other Amazons think. They sent me to my death unprepared, and then disowned and abandoned me in the afterlife. I want no part of them. So even though I still think that men are weaker, if you’re useful to me, I don’t care that you pee standing up.”

“Wow, touching, thanks,” said Adam dryly.

“Do you want to work together or not?” Emma asked impatiently.

Adam stared at her for a long moment, considering. Then he slowly removed the axe blade from her throat and helped her to her feet by her good arm. He maintained his grip on her hand, looking her firmly in the eyes.

“I’ll work with you,” he said. “I will watch your back, keep you safe, and do my share of whatever the hell else needs to be done around here. But I want two things from you in return. Firstly, I want you to do the same thing for me.”

He paused, waiting for her confirmation. Emma nodded; that was the kind of truce she’d had in mind anyway. Adam continued.

“And I want you to help me find a way out of here, back to earth.”

Emma stared at him with surprise and pity.

“It’s not possible,” she said, not unkindly.

“I didn’t think that getting out of hell was possible,” said Adam. “And yet here I am. So what’s it gonna be? Will you help me look for a way out, or would you rather fend for yourself?”

The two locked gazes for a long moment. Emma could not deny that the prospect of getting out, however unlikely, was extremely appealing, and she found herself surprisingly reluctant to lose Adam. She silently shook the hand that was still holding her own. Adam grinned for the first time in centuries.

ooooooooooooooooo

“You should let me look at that,” said Adam.

The two of them were huddled at the base of two trees at the edge of a small clearing. They had walked away from the river, trying to put as much distance as possible between them and the portal that was sure to become a popular spot for curious creatures. Emma clutched the broken arm that she had been cradling closer to her chest.

“What would you know about fixing it?” she asked distrustfully.

She was used to treating her own injuries, although she was not sure how she was going to splint this break one-handed. She healed faster than humans, but that would do her no good if the bone was not in the proper position when it healed itself.

“Well, I was pre-med before I died,” said Adam. “I was also EMT certified. I think I can handle setting one broken bone.”

Emma studied his face carefully, reading only confidence and concern there. She slowly extended the wounded limb towards him. The young man was surprisingly gentle as he set the break, binding it to a sturdy stick with strips torn from the hem of his ragged shirt. Having her arm set still hurt like a bitch though, so Emma talked to her newfound ally to take her mind off of the pain.

“So,” she began. “Hell.”

Adam’s fingers paused in their work for a moment, before he resumed with a sigh.

“Yeah. Hell.” He was silent for a long moment before he continued. “I don’t remember all of it, to be honest. I remember the beginning; falling down into the Cage, and the raw _fury_ of the angels…”

He trailed off, staring at a memory that only he could see.

“Those first decades were the worst. My older brother was down there with me, and the things they did to us…You honestly wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I wouldn’t _want_ you to believe me. My brother tried to protect me from the worst of it, but there was only so much he could do. The angels were pissed, creative, and had nothing better to do than vent their frustrations on us. The next several decades sort of blend together in my mind after that. It’s like my brain just deleted or compressed the information that it couldn’t handle.

“But then something changed. My brother disappeared. I don’t really know what happened, but there was this presence. I’ve never felt anything so powerful, and I had just spent almost two centuries locked up with a couple of archangels. Anyway, whatever it was, it took my brother. That’s part of the reason I want to get out of here so badly; I’m pretty sure that he was brought back to earth, and I need to find him, to make sure he’s okay.”

“You two are close then?” asked Emma, engrossed in the story.

“Honestly? Before hell, I hated him, and our other brother. I didn’t even know about them until after I died, and the angels found me in heaven so that they could manipulate me. They told me that my brothers only cared about themselves and each other, and that everything else, including the world, was expendable.

“Then they kidnapped me to stop me from letting myself get possessed by an angel, and I resented them for that. I resented them for growing up with my father when I couldn’t; I resented them for letting me get killed; I resented them for treating me like a kid.

“But then they came for me.” Adam let out a humorless chuckle. “It turns out that angels lie, in case you were wondering. I was an idiot, and told the angels where I was so that they could take me to do my job. But they were only using me as bait, and my brothers knew it, but they came for me anyway. They still couldn’t stop me from being possessed, but they tried their hardest. They treated me like family.

“And then there was hell. Like I told you, my brother tried to protect me from whatever he could. He would distract the angels when they were about to start torturing me, so that they would go to town on him instead. He would throw himself in front of me when the angels set hellhounds on us, so that they would get to him first. I had never been anything but a whiny jerk to him, but he still took blow after blow for me, even when he knew it was useless.

“I was relieved when he was gone, because he didn’t deserve that place, and watching him sacrifice himself for me again and again…I think the angels let him do it because they knew that it was torture for me too. So when he got out, they could only torture me physically, not mentally.”

He paused, staring into space again. He had finished splinting Emma’s arm, but the Amazon was afraid to move, not wanting to break the spell that had fallen over them.

“I guess they did still torture me mentally,” Adam continued at last. “Angels can create reality from nothing, and they can make themselves look like anyone. They put on the faces of people I care about; my parents, my brothers, my girlfriend…They tortured me while wearing those faces and it…”

He looked up at Emma’s face and seemed to shake himself out of the memory.

“I’m sorry,” he said, releasing the arm that he was still holding. “I won’t make you listen to this.”

“I don’t mind,” said Emma softly.

She was astonished when she realized that it was true, that she actually _cared_ about this tortured young man. Not just for his safety, but his feelings. She had never experienced that before, that sense of kinship with another person, especially a human man.

“ _I_ mind,” said Adam firmly. “Besides, you haven’t told me much about yourself.”

“Not much to tell, really,” said Emma with a shrug. “Like I said, I was only a day old when I died, so the rest of my life I’ve spent in here. It’s only been a little over a year.”

“Okay, but you must-” Adam broke off suddenly, confusion spreading across his features. “Wait, what do you mean you’re only a year old? What year is it?”

“I think it’s 2013,” Emma replied. “I mean, it’s kind of hard to keep track of time here, but I’m pretty sure. Why? What year was it when you went to hell?”

“It was 2010,” said Adam slowly. “But hell…it felt like centuries. I mean, my brother told me that time runs differently down there, but I still thought that it would have been more than three years on earth.”

He was silent for a moment before realization began to creep across his features.

“You were killed by Sam Winchester in 2012?” he asked urgently.

“Yeah…” said Emma, unsure of why that was significant. “Why?”

Adam’s face slowly split into a grin.

“What?” asked Emma impatiently.

“It’s only been three years,” said Adam, ignoring her question about Sam. “Just three years! Everyone I know, my brothers, my friends, they won’t be ancient or dead from old age.”

Emma smiled in response to his enthusiasm. She was glad that she had been able to give him his first piece of good news in hundreds of years. She marveled again at the strange connection that she felt to this Adam Milligan. She felt the compulsive desire to trust him, when she had never trusted anyone since the Amazons who brainwashed her.

“All the more reason to get out, I guess,” she said.

“Yeah.”

Adam was thoughtful for a moment.

“What would you do, if you got out of here?” he asked. “Would you keep trying to kill your dad; see if you could rejoin the Amazons?”

Emma sensed the weight of his question, and was surprised by the readiness of her answer, although she had not given the matter much thought. She still did not really believe that either of them had a chance of making it out, but she was willing to play along, to dream with him.

“No,” she said. “Like I told you, I’m not loyal to them anymore. They sent me to my death. And my father, he never did anything to me. Hell, he tried to _help_ me; he would have taken care of me if I’d let him. So no, I figure his life as a hunter is hard enough without his dead daughter coming back to kill him. I would leave him alone.”

“And his brother?” asked Adam. “The one who killed you; would you go looking for revenge?

Emma had to consider that question more carefully. Was she still angry at Sam Winchester? He had sent her to this horrific place, but what choice had she given him?

_She held her father’s gaze, calmly ignoring the gun that he was pointing at her. She knew that he did not want to use it; he had been pleading with her to just go, to walk away. But she did not want his help or pity. She wanted his blood, wanted to take her rightful place in the ranks of her sisterhood, away from the taint of men. She tightened her grip on the dagger in her hand, waiting for her moment to spring._

_Before either of them could move, the door exploded inward with a crash, another armed hunter standing behind it. She did not see the hesitation in his eyes that was so clearly present in her father’s, so she did the only thing that she could. She turned to her dad with a desperate plea, before facing the more threatening hunter once more. She caught a glimpse of deep sadness within him before she heard the deafening crack of a gunshot, and looked down to see the crimson stain spreading across her chest before she tumbled into the darkness that had risen up around her._

“Nah,” said Emma at last. “I understand why he did it. And honestly, the Winchesters were more of a family to me than the Amazons ever were. I think, if we ever make it out, I’ll just use it as a fresh start. I’ll pretend that it’s my first day on earth instead of the second. I would probably just travel; see places that aren’t full of monsters out for my blood. My last partner told me about the ocean once. I think I’d like to see that.”

Adam nodded, looking thoughtful again. It seemed to be a primary aspect of his personality.

“What about you?” asked Emma, eager to take the attention away from herself. “You spent all those centuries in hell, then got spat into Purgatory; what will you do when you finally get back?”

“I just want to find my brothers. Their lives are pretty dangerous, and even though it’s only been three years for them, I have no idea what could have happened to them in that time. And I want to make sure that my brother really did get back from hell alright. But after I make sure that they’re okay? Who knows? Once upon a time, I wanted to be a doctor. I can’t really imagine going back to that old life that I had, but maybe I can. Maybe after all this, I’ll finally get to have that back.”

Emma smiled. She could tell that he did not really believe that, but she would not be the one to call him out on his lie to himself.

“I hope you do,” she said earnestly. “And I hope that you find your brothers.”

“Yeah, about that-” Adam began.

Whatever he had been about to say was cut off when Emma threw her good hand into the air to quiet him. The silence was complete and deafening for a moment as the two companions listened carefully for whatever had tripped Emma’s superhumanly sharp senses. Adam recoiled slightly when he noticed the change that had overtaken the Amazon’s face, changing the color of her eyes and the skin around them. Emma gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile, but did not have time to explain her unique physiology while she was still on red alert.

Suddenly, the quiet stillness was shattered as four creatures burst out of the foliage surrounding Adam and Emma. The pair jumped into motion, Emma swinging at the closest attacker with the axe that she had hastily grabbed in her good hand. The monster dropped instantly with a cleanly severed head. Adam dove for the stone weapon that it had dropped, stabbing upward wildly as two of the creatures bore down on him. He nicked one in the leg, which only seemed to infuriate her more. She and her companion pounced onto the human.

Emma, though locked in ferocious combat with the man who appeared to be the leader of the group, noticed her partner’s predicament. She had promised to watch his back, and she already cared more about him than she had anyone else in her short life. So she threw out her foot in a kick that shattered the kneecap of her opponent, before burying her axe in his gut. She lunged at one of Adam’s attackers, wrenching her back so hard by the arm that the shoulder popped out of place. The creature screamed, and Adam used the distraction to plunge his stolen stone blade into the other monster’s chest before pivoting neatly and decapitating the one that was currently trying to tear Emma to shreds one-handed.

The young Amazon looked up at him, breathing hard, her face splattered with blood. She gave Adam a wry grin.

“Welcome to Purgatory.”


	2. Chapter 2

“What were those things?” asked Adam as he watched Emma bend down to search the bodies.

“Werewolves, by the smell,” she replied, turning over one of the corpses with a grunt of exertion.

He supposed that she was looking for anything useful that they might be carrying, such as food or more weapons, but it still unsettled him to see her touching the mutilated remains so cavalierly. He had seen so much worse in hell, but despite everything that she had told him and he had observed for himself, Emma struck him as a gentle soul. A bit like her father, really; a tough exterior but a surprisingly deep and caring heart.

Dean’s daughter. His niece…the term sounded odd in his head. He had never given much thought to the prospect of being an uncle, raised as an only child and then introduced to two brothers he thought unlikely ever to procreate. Leave it to Dean to have a kid through supernatural means.

Adam did think it was rather poetic that his oldest brother had managed to father a girl with feminism in her very genes. During the occasional moments of rest in the Cage, Sam had told him about some of Dean’s exploits with women. He had particularly enjoyed the story about the girl who had slipped scarlet hair dye into Dean’s shampoo bottle after he cheated on her in high school. Apparently Adam’s eldest brother had walked around with a flaming red head for two months before his hair got long enough to cut the color out. Sam had taken great pleasure in telling the people they encountered to ask Dean about his hair.

He was pulled from his train of thought when Emma approached, carrying a bundle of weapons in her arms. She let them fall to the ground at his feet.

“First thing you need in Purgatory is a weapon,” she said without preamble. “Pick the one that suits you best. We’ll bury the rest of them so that we can find them again if we need them, and no one else will get their hands on them.”

She stepped back so that Adam could get a clear look at the crude weapons in front of him. They all looked handmade, like the axe that Emma carried, cut from some kind of black stone and honed to surprisingly sharp edges. Two of them were also axes, the other more of a short, malformed sword. Adam still had in his hand the weapon that he had snatched up from Emma’s first victim. It was carved into a gentle crescent, sharp on both edges. He hefted it in his hand, testing out the weight. He did not even bother picking up any of the other weapons.

“I’ll use this one,” he said firmly, tightening his grip on the worn wooden handle.

“Well good for you,” said Emma, raising an eyebrow. “But you still need to help me bury the other ones, princess. I have a gimp arm, and I seem to remember you saying something about doing your share around here?”

Adam hid a smile as he leaned down to scoop up the other blades. She was most definitely Dean’s kid.

When they found nothing else of use on the bodies, Emma led him towards the cache of supplies that she had apparently buried close by.

“Nobody really knows how big Purgatory is,” she said to her partner as they walked. “Which probably means that it is pretty damn big. If you think about it, millions of monsters must have died since the dawn of creation, and all those creatures take up a lot of real estate. Anyway, it’s easier to just stay in one general area; knowing it well helps you survive.”

“What happens to the monsters that die here?” puffed Adam, starting to believe that his niece’s definition of ‘close by’ might not be the same as his. Or he was just extremely unused to walking after centuries of confinement.

Emma rounded on him, her expression torn between amusement and irritation.

“You really ask the hard questions, don’t you?” she asked. “No one knows. Well, no one we can ask. And I really don’t want to find out, do you?”

Adam just shrugged and motioned for her to continue walking. He was still intensely curious, but he had come too far to not make it back to earth. Besides, even though he was in monster heaven, he was human, so his soul would probably just get dragged back to hell if he died here.

“Speaking of hard questions,” Emma continued. “I think I’ve been waiting pretty patiently. But since you don’t seem to feel like sharing, I’m just going to have to ask. If you were in the deepest, most secure part of hell, how did you get out?”

Adam did not answer immediately. He had known that this question would be coming sooner or later, and he did not blame his niece for asking it, but he did not know how to answer. He remembered clearly what had happened after he got out of the Cage itself, sneaking for what felt like weeks through the tunnels and cells of hell, fighting the occasional demons that had crossed his path. And he could certainly remember what had happened before he got out. Part of him could still feel Lucifer tearing off his flesh using only his fingernails. But the memory of the actual escape was a haze in his mind.

“I honestly don’t really know,” he said at last. “One minute, I was being tortured, and the next…I just have this sense of Michael, the angel who had possessed me. He had stopped torturing me in the last couple of decades. I think he felt bad for me, because I was his vessel and it was his fault that I was there in the first place. I sort of get the feeling that he helped me to escape, that maybe it was possible for him to get a human soul out, even though the angels were still trapped. I think he might have wiped some of the memories from my mind too, so that I wouldn’t go insane.

“Although,” he continued thoughtfully, “maybe he just wanted to give me a different kind of torture. I thought I heard my brother’s voice when I first got out of the Cage. I thought I could hear him shouting, and the hope that it gave me… I thought that he had come back for me. But then I couldn’t find him. I looked for weeks; I crawled through corners of hell that even the devil has probably forgotten about, I killed my way through dozens of demons, and still no sign of my brother.

“But then I smelled fresh air for the first time in centuries, and I found my way here. I thought that I had gotten lucky, but maybe Michael sent me to the portal to this place on purpose. He let me think that I had a chance at getting out, but really I’m still in another prison, and as soon as I die here, I’ll just be his plaything again.”

Adam could not prevent the bitterness and despair from leaking into his voice, and Emma clearly heard it. She gave him an unreadable glance, before reaching out hesitantly and placing her good hand on his shoulder.

“Let’s make sure you don’t die here then,” she said. “I’m gonna get you out, Adam. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

Adam was astonished by her loyalty. He had not even told her that they were related, as it did not seem like she had the best of relationships with his side of the family. Perhaps it was time to tell her though, because for some inexplicable reason, she seemed to trust and even like him. He was even more surprised when he realized that the feeling was mutual.

“Thanks,” he said softly. “Listen Emma, there’s something that I have to tell you about your dad.”

She dropped her hand from his shoulder but did not move away. She just gazed at him in expectant curiosity.

“I’m not adopted, am I?” she asked, startling a laugh out of Adam.

“No,” he chuckled. “At least, I don’t think so.”

He sobered up. He really did not know how to say this, so he decided to just start talking.

“No. Emma, your father, Dean Winchester…he’s one of those brothers of mine that I’ve been telling you about. He and Sam are my older brothers, which makes me your uncle.”

She stared at him. And stared at him.

“But your last name is Milligan,” she said at last, struggling to understand.

“I’m their half-brother,” Adam clarified. “We have the same dad, John Winchester. He raised Sam and Dean as hunters after their mom died, and he met my mom, Kate Milligan…”

He trailed off, remembering the bloody last moments of their lives. He would never forget his mom’s screams as she was eaten alive. The ghouls had torn her apart first, forcing Adam to watch and listen. It was part of the reason he had been so eager to accept Zachariah’s offer in the first place. After a death like that, he would have done anything to make it right.

Eventually he realized that Emma was still staring at him, waiting for him to continue. He cleared his throat.

“Anyway, John met my mom on a hunt, but he left town before she knew that she was pregnant. She decided to raise me on her own, until I finally convinced her to call him when I was twelve. He was good to me, I guess; he taught me how to drive, took me to baseball games. But he was never around, so I never really got to know him. And he never told me about Sam and Dean. Like I told you before, I found out about them from the angels.”

He stopped, unsure of what else to say. It was certainly an unconventional family story, but he was telling it to his dead Amazonian half-niece, so unconventional was really to be expected.

“Okay,” said Emma slowly. “So we’re family.”

She did not seem to be put off by the idea. But then, family probably did not mean the same thing to her as it did to Adam. Suddenly she let out a soft snort.

“What would you have done if I’d told you I was still out for my dad’s blood?” she asked.

Adam snorted too. He had been exceptionally relieved to hear that she did not hold a grudge against his brothers, but even more relieved to find out that both of his brothers were still alive in 2012.

“Well, I wouldn’t have helped you get out of here, for one thing,” he said.

He left it at that, and Emma did not press further. She just gave him a nod and a small smile before turning and setting off again towards her buried cache.

“You’d better not be expecting special treatment because you’re my uncle, old man,” she called over her shoulder.

Adam grinned and set off after her.

“I wouldn’t dream of it, warrior princess.”

ooooooooooooooooo

“Good grief,” said Adam as he stared down at the massive pit of weapons, clothes, and other odds and ends. He had not been expecting Emma’s supplies to be such a large horde. “How did you manage to collect all this stuff in a year?”

The Amazon shrugged.

“I’m a good fighter,” she said defensively. “That means I take out a lot of monsters, and that means that I collect a lot of stuff from the bodies. I never know what I might need when, and I certainly don’t want to leave weapons around for other people to use against me, so I bury it here.”

“I’ll say.”

Adam had anticipated a couple of stone blades in a small hole under a tree or something. What he was looking at however, was a huge heap of loot stashed in a deep cavity that had been painstakingly dug and covered with a massive boulder. He had not been able to budge the large rock, but his niece had shoved it aside with ease, despite her injured arm.

“Will you just put the spare weapons in the damn hole so we can go?” she snapped.

Adam chuckled but obliged. Emma rolled the boulder back into place.

“So what now?” asked Adam.

“Well, that is the question, isn’t it?” Emma replied wryly.

She was silent for a moment, thinking.

“I’ve heard stories recently,” she said slowly, “of humans winding up here like you.”

“And you forgot to mention that?” asked Adam incredulously.

“Do you know what ‘stories’ means here?” she replied angrily. “We don’t exactly have a water cooler that we gather around to swap gossip. I only hear things when my opponents are feeling talkative as I’m killing them. Believe it or not, that doesn’t happen very often. I’m usually too busy trying to stay alive to interrogate other monsters about humans that I didn’t have any reason to care about!”

“I’m sorry,” said Adam as his anger faded. “But that sounds like our only lead. Do you have any idea where we might be able to find those other humans?”

“That’s just the thing,” said Emma after a moment, apparently deciding to forgive his insensitivity. “I only heard about it because the rumor is that the humans made it out somehow. I didn’t believe it, but that was why I was checking out the portal that you came through; I thought maybe it was a way out. When I found out that it led to hell though…”

Adam felt a stab of guilt as he saw the pain of that disappointment flash across her face. He knew how she felt, because he had experienced the same emotion when he realized that his great escape had only landed him in another pile of crap.

“It still feels impossible to get back to earth,” Emma began. “But you’re right, we should find out what happened to those humans. Maybe that’s the key; maybe only humans can get out.”

Adam appreciated the effort that she was making, especially since it sounded like there was the possibility that he would be able to get out, but she would still be trapped.

“That sounds like as good a lead as any,” he said. “So where do we start?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Emma was having trouble processing what she had managed to get herself into within the last twenty-four hours. She had started out her day as usual, curled up in a fork between the branches of her favorite tree. She had fought off two minor attacks before sunrise, and had been well on her way to surviving another day in Purgatory. But then she had gone to the riverside portal on a whim, and now here she was, trekking through the thick woods far outside of her usual roaming grounds, searching for monsters that might have information about humans in Purgatory, side by side with an uncle she had not known existed.

She still was not sure how she felt about Adam. She had been almost relieved when she found out that they were related, because it allowed her to explain and categorize the feelings that she had for him. What she was experiencing was a sense of family, something that she had gotten a taste of with the Amazons before she was cast out, and even a little bit with her father after talking to him before her death. She found that she liked having someone to care about, but it scared her too, because it made her more vulnerable.

Emma glanced around as they walked, scanning for danger. She froze, gripping the back of Adam’s jacket to bring him to a halt. Her uncle turned to her questioningly, but knew better than to make a sound. She pointed at the small female figure slumped against the base of a tree, twenty feet away from them. Adam relaxed slightly, clearly not feeling threatened. Emma fought back a sigh and leaned forward until her lips nearly touched his ear, speaking as quietly as she could.

“Sleep is easy to fake,” she hissed. “Never let your guard down.”

Adam glanced back at the motionless figure, looking slightly more wary, but still unconvinced. Emma tightened her grip on the handle of her axe and prepared to step forward to interrogate what she could tell from the smell was a vampire. Before she could move however, she saw two more figures creep out of the underbrush and towards the prone form at the base of the tree. Emma grimaced when she realized what they were.

Wendigos. Even by her standards, they were nasty. Cut off forever from their supply of human meat, the creatures were driven even more insane than they had been on earth. They killed whatever was closest to them, tearing their victims to pieces ruthlessly. It was not a death that Emma would wish on anyone. Not to mention the fact that it was going to cost her any information that woman might have had. But she was not stupid enough to try to take on two wendigos with a partner who knew nothing about fighting monsters.

Apparently said partner did not feel the same way. As the first wendigo pounced, drawing a scream from the woman who had been sleeping on the ground, Adam ran forward, his stone sword raised. Emma stood frozen for a moment, watching in shock as her uncle plunged his blade into the closest monster’s shoulder, effectively drawing its attention away from the woman. Unfortunately, that attention was now fully focused on Adam, the first human it had seen in what was probably a very long time, completely unperturbed by the weapon sticking out of its back.

“Shit!” hissed Emma as she watched the creature fling an arm out towards Adam, sending him flying into the base of a tree, where he crumpled, motionless.

She threw herself at the wendigo, putting her body between it and her fallen partner. She swung violently with her axe, severing one of the creature’s arms cleanly. This did not seem to faze it much however. It simply let out an enraged screech and launched itself at her, its remaining arm poised to swipe. Emma sidestepped out of the way, letting it run by her. She grabbed the sword that was still embedded in its shoulder and dragged it downwards with her superhuman strength, essentially cutting the monster in half. That slowed it down a bit, but Emma had forgotten about the other wendigo.

She felt the hot breath on her neck a second before the creature slammed into her from behind. She cried out as the razor-sharp claws pierced her shoulder and she was flung to the ground. She tried desperately to lift her axe, but the wendigo had her pinned down. She squeezed her eyes shut as she felt misshapen teeth begin to sink into the back of her neck, bracing herself for her second death. She took a second to appreciate the irony of the fact that she was going to die because of another one of her uncles.

Before the jaws could clamp down fully, the weight of the monster suddenly vanished from Emma’s back. She rolled over quickly to see the vampire woman clinging to the shoulders of the wendigo, tearing at its throat with her second set of teeth. Emma did not take the time to marvel over the stranger helping her, she simply sprang into action.

“Down!” she yelled at the vampire, who glanced at her and then jumped away from the wendigo immediately.

Emma brought her axe down on the wendigo’s head, splitting its skull open. The creature fell to the ground, but it continued to twitch, claw-tipped limbs flailing. Emma pulled one of her precious books of matches from her jacket pocket, lighting one and dropping it on the squirming body. As it went up in flames, she turned to the still-moving form of the first creature she had taken out and hauled it over to the fire as well. She watched them burn in satisfaction for a moment before she remembered how she had wound up fighting them in the first place.

“Adam!” she said urgently as she ran to the base of the tree where her uncle was still lying prone.

She shook him roughly by the shoulder, searching his body for any injuries. His shirt had been torn open where the wendigo’s claws had struck him, but the scratches on his chest were extremely shallow. She breathed a sigh of relief when his eyes began to drift open.

“What happened?” Adam asked dazedly.

Satisfied that he was not seriously hurt, irritation began to replace the worry in Emma.

“You were an idiot, that’s what happened,” she told him angrily. “What the hell was that?!”

“What?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’? You just charged straight at two wendigos in blood frenzies, and you don’t know why I’m upset? You have no idea what you’re doing; you could have gotten us both killed!”

Adam did not even have the decency to look sheepish.

“It worked out, didn’t it?” he asked.

“This time,” Emma replied angrily. “What happens when you charge blindly at another monster you don’t know how to take care of? Wendigos can only be killed by fire, did you know that? What would have happened if I hadn’t had my matches on me, or if I hadn’t been fast enough to help you after you got yourself knocked out? We’d both be dead, that’s what. So until you actually know more about what you’re dealing with, you will follow my lead, or I will leave you behind.”

She glowered at the older man, hoping that he would not call her bluff. She had no intention of leaving him, but he really was going to get them both killed if he kept pulling reckless stunts like that. After holding her gaze stubbornly for a moment, Adam sighed and nodded, looking away uncomfortably. That was when he noticed the oozing wounds on her shoulder. He gasped, sitting up quickly and reaching for her.

“Are you alright?” he asked, gently pulling aside the layers of shredded fabric covering the puncture marks left by the wendigo’s claws.

“I’m fine,” Emma replied dismissively. She had suffered worse injuries.

“No, you’re not,” said Adam, probing gently at one of the cuts. “These are deep.”

Emma shrugged away from him. She was not used to having someone who cared about her wounds, and while it was not an unpleasant feeling, they did not have time for it at the moment.

“I’m fine,” she repeated. “I heal quickly. We have more important things to deal with.”

She nodded meaningfully at the vampire, who had surprisingly not run away or attacked. Adam finally seemed to remember the woman who had prompted the attack in the first place. He stared at the pointed set of bloody teeth that were still visible in her mouth and scrambled to his feet, looking around frantically for his sword, which was on the ground ten feet away; out of reach. Adam stepped in front of Emma, but the vampire just smiled, retracting her fangs and pushing her lank brown hair out of her face.

“It’s okay, human,” said the woman. “My name is Lenore. I mean you and your friend no harm.”

“Why should I believe that?” asked Adam warily.

“Other than the fact that you’re still alive, no reason really,” replied the vampire sarcastically. “If I wanted you dead I could have let the wendigo finish killing you both.”

“Yeah, and then had to deal with the monster on your own,” said Emma, stepping out from behind her uncle’s pointlessly protective stance.

“True,” said Lenore. “But the wendigos are both dead now, and you’ll notice that I still haven’t attacked you. I had the perfect chance; your back was to me for a long time when you were checking on your friend.”

The woman had a point there. Emma kicked herself mentally for letting her guard down. She could not afford that kind of carelessness if she was going to be keeping them both alive.

“So what do you want, then?” she asked.

“I want you to let me go.” Lenore sighed, glancing at Emma appraisingly. “You’re an Amazon, right? I know you would be able to track me down by smell. All I’ve ever wanted is to be left alone. You helped me, I helped you, now we can all go our separate ways.”

Emma stared hard at the vampire for a long moment. She could detect no bloodlust or anger in her eyes, just weariness. She could empathize with that. The constant kill-or-be-killed atmosphere of Purgatory could be invigorating at times, but mostly it just felt pointless and exhausting.

“How do I know that you won’t come after us?” she asked, glancing at Adam. Lenore seemed to understand her concern.

“You mean so that I can feed on the human?” she asked. “Don’t worry about that. I don’t drink human blood, not even when I was on earth.”

Emma raised an eyebrow, incredulous. The ‘I’m different’ speech was the same one that she had given to her father, back when she had wanted nothing more than to earn his trust so that she could kill him in a violent ritual. She had no faith in the words coming from a vampire’s lips.

“Scout’s honor,” said Lenore defensively. “I asked to be killed when I could no longer control myself, and then I came here, where the thirst isn’t as bad. Besides, something tells me that I wouldn’t be able to sneak up on you two anyway.”

That much was true at least. Emma had vowed to be even more wary after this encounter, not wanting to have any more close calls. She thoughtfully studied the vampire before her. She had always intended to get information from her. There was no reason that the interrogation had to culminate in death. She glanced at Adam, who just shrugged, letting her take the lead as he had promised.

“Fine,” she said finally. “We’ll let you go. We won’t come after you on two conditions.”

“Two?” Lenore repeated cautiously.

“The first is pretty obvious; you stay away from us and you don’t tell anyone else about my friend here.”

Emma looked at Adam again. If word got out that there was another human in Purgatory, they would be hunted ceaselessly. Lenore seemed to understand this, and she nodded.

“Okay. And the second?”

“We need some information.”

Lenore’s expression cleared.

“You want to know how to get him out of here,” she stated, nodding towards Adam.

“Is it possible?” asked Adam with desperate hope.

“Yes. Two other humans have done it before you, as well as a vampire. Well, an angel got out too, but he was rescued by other angels, and somehow I doubt that they will be coming for you.”

There was something unreadable in Lenore’s eyes. It was not quite bitterness or sadness or regret, but some strange, inexplicable mix of the three. Emma did not bother puzzling over it though. Could it really be possible? Could they both actually make it out of this place?

“How?” she asked urgently.

“I don’t know.”

Emma’s stomach sank and she took a threatening step towards the vampire.

“But I know who does,” Lenore continued, holding her hand up placatingly. “His name is Benny. He’s a vampire like me, a bit of a legend in our community, and he’s the only creature to ever make it out of here.”

“If he made it out, how are we supposed to talk to him?” asked Adam in frustration.

“I said he made it out, I didn’t say he stayed out. Someone killed him on earth, and he got sent back here. But if anyone can help you, it’s him.”

“So how do we find him?” asked Emma impatiently.

“Well that’s where it’s going to get difficult,” said Lenore with a wry grin. “There’s no way to track down a specific vampire unless you have his scent, and there’s no way of getting that unless you meet him. So I would say you have two options. The first is to let him come to you. The human is sending out a scent beacon that can probably be detected from miles away, and Benny might get curious and come looking for you. The other is to track down every vampire scent that you come across, and hope that eventually you find the one that belongs to Benny.”

Neither of those options sounded ideal, but Emma could not see many alternatives, other than continuing to go around asking people. They were unlikely to find another monster as cooperative as Lenore.

“So is that all?” Lenore asked. “Can I go now, or would you like me to decode the meaning of life for you as well?”

Emma snorted, but she waved for Lenore to go. The vampire turned, poised to dash away, but then she paused, looking back at them thoughtfully.

“If you get back, and happen to run into a pair of hunters called the Winchesters, tell them…tell them that I appreciated them treating me like a person, not just a vampire.”

With that she was gone. Emma and Adam stared after her in surprise before turning to look at each other.

“Do you think she meant…?” Emma began.

“Probably. Man, those two really get around don’t they?”

“They certainly make an impression.”

“Yeah.” Adam got that faraway look in his eyes that was becoming extremely familiar. Emma wondered what kind of impression the Winchesters had left on him. She decided not to ask.

Adam finally returned his gaze to Emma. She could see the questions and uncertainty in his eyes, so she smiled confidently.

“You ready to find our ticket out of here?”


	4. Chapter 4

Adam had been cautiously optimistic after their encounter with Lenore, but after three weeks of searching fruitlessly for the elusive Benny, he was starting to lose hope. He and Emma had decided to go with the ‘track down every vampire possible’ option. They were having no trouble finding the bloodsuckers, they just could not find the only one that they cared about. Adam sighed as he watched Emma slice the head off of the third vampire they had encountered that day.

“Maybe Lenore was lying,” he began reluctantly. His niece glowered up at him. She had been obsessed with finding Benny ever since Lenore had told them that non-humans could get out of Purgatory as well.

“So what do you want to do?” she asked irritably? “Give up? Stop looking for our only chance of getting out of here, and just continue to live every day fighting for our lives until you get killed because you’re too old to fight, and I get killed because I lost my partner? Good plan.”

Adam sighed again. He knew that she was right, but he could not help the despair nagging at him.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “You’re right.”

Emma’s face softened. She wiped her bloody hand on her jeans and reached out to grip his shoulder.

“Nobody said it would be easy,” she told him bracingly. “But I gave you my word that I would get you out of here, and I will stand by that.”

He smiled gratefully at her. He felt guilty for complaining; he knew that she was in the same situation as he was. His niece was the only good thing to come from all of this crap. Combat brings people together, and the two of them had seen plenty of combat in the past few weeks. Adam got the feeling that he now knew as much about Emma as she did about herself, which was not much, due to the fact that she had only had a day to discover her identity before she was thrust into a never-ending fight for survival.

“So suck it up and quit whining; we’ve got a vampire to find.”

Adam chuckled as Emma turned away from him, closing her eyes and inhaling deeply. He sometimes forgot that she was not human, but then she would do something like pick up a week-old scent trail or toss a boulder twenty feet, and he would be reminded that she was an ultimate warrior. He watched as the skin around her eyes turned yellow, one of the physical manifestations of her Amazon powers. At last Emma smiled and looked back at Adam.

“Got one,” she said triumphantly.

She led him through the woods for about a mile before stopping abruptly, looking around cautiously. Adam had learned by now to trust her senses, so he tightened his grip on the sword that he carried with him everywhere, adopting a fighting stance. The two of them stood like that for several minutes, the silence pressing down on them.

Adam had just begun to relax when a huge dark canine shape exploded from nowhere, launching itself at him. He only had time to register its shadowy black fur, glowing red eyes, and massive, glistening teeth, before it was upon him. It hit him square in the chest, instantly expelling all of the air from his lungs and pinning him to the ground. His sword had been jarred from his grasp, so all Adam could do was raise his arms defensively as the creature lunged at him with snapping jaws.

But suddenly Emma was there, swinging her axe at the creature with a vicious cry. Her weapon connected with its shoulder, but it did not seem to bother the creature. It pounced at Emma instead, horrifically long claws extended towards her chest. The Amazon screamed as those claws pierced her abdomen, slicing into her flesh mercilessly.

Adam choked, horrified. He tried to get to his feet, to help her, but he still could not breathe. He could barely even see through the black spots dancing across his vision. But he could hear the screams his niece let out as the monster continued to bite and tear at her. He had never heard her scream before; she had always been too proud for that. The sound pierced his chest, and he fought desperately to pull air back into his lungs, his bruised ribs protesting.

As he was finally drawing in a breath, Adam saw another figure emerge from the surrounding trees. He glanced around quickly, ascertaining the situation, before raising his crude weapon and bringing it down on the creature’s neck, severing its head. The entire thing dissolved into oily black smoke, which sank into the forest floor.

The man who had come to their rescue glanced over at Adam, teeth bared to reveal the set of vampire fangs that had descended during combat. He then turned and bent towards Emma, who was lying motionless on the ground, everything around her stained scarlet.

“Stay away from her!” Adam shouted, throwing himself between the vampire and Emma, protectively raising the sword that he had retrieved from the ground. The man stepped back, raising his hands in a gesture of peace.

“Easy brother,” he said in a calm southern drawl. “I wasn’t trying to hurt her. She don’t look good though.”

Adam looked down at his niece. The vampire was right; she was in bad shape. Her torso had been torn to ribbons. Adam could see flashes of white where the claws had ripped down to her ribs, and the lighter pink of her intestines visible through the shredded scraps of flesh. Her eyes were open, but they were glassy and distant, and she was struggling to breathe through the clots of blood that were choking her airway.

“No,” murmured Adam desperately as he tried to use his hands to stop the bleeding. The rational part of his brain knew full well that there was too much damage. An emergency room full of doctors and equipment would not have been able to save her, much less one former pre-med student with no supplies. She had minutes left, if that. But the part of him that had spent the past month growing close to her, getting to know and admire and rely on her, the only family he had been with in centuries, that part of him would not accept that she was dying.

“No,” he said again, surprised when he saw a drop of moisture splash down onto Emma’s face. He reached down with a red-stained hand to wipe it away, realizing that he had started crying. Strange. He had not cried since his mother died, not even in hell.

“Emma, please. You have to stay with me. You have to hold on. Come on, you’re an Amazon. I’ve seen how fast you heal, warrior princess, so just _heal._ Please.”

It was useless though. This was too much for her to bounce back from. He left his hand on Emma’s cheek as her eyes caught his for a moment before drifting shut, and her breathing slowed until he could barely hear it.

This was his fault. She had sacrificed herself to protect him, just like Sam had, time and again in hell. How could he keep letting the people he cared about get hurt because of him?

Adam was so lost in his grief that he had forgotten about the vampire that had saved his life. He felt himself being pushed aside, and stiffened as he watched the man lean over Emma.

“Get away-” he began fiercely.

“I’m trying to help her,” said the vampire impatiently. “Not like she’s got anything to lose.”

The creature grasped Emma’s arm gently, drawing a small pocket knife across her dirty skin, leaving a crimson trail. The Amazon did not twitch, but Adam did not want to see her lose any more blood.

“What are you-?”

“Give me your arm,” the vampire interrupted.

“Excuse me?”

“Do you want to save her life or not? Give me your damn arm. She doesn’t have much time left.”

Adam hesitated for a moment, staring distrustfully at the vampire. But if there was a chance of saving Emma…

He extended his arm slowly. The vampire grabbed it and slashed his knife across it. Adam gasped in pain, but the other man ignored him, pulling his bleeding arm closer to Emma’s.

“Okay, repeat after me: conjuncti sumus, unum sumus,” he said urgently.

“What will that do?” asked Adam, recognizing the Latin, but not understanding what good it would do.

“Just say it!” snapped the vampire.

Adam only hesitated for another second before complying. The moment he spoke the incantation, Emma’s body began to dissolve. He tried to pull away as the strange essence that she had become began to pour into the cut on his arm, but the vampire held him in place with an iron grip. Soon Emma had vanished completely, and there was a pulsing, swirling _something_ trapped beneath the skin of Adam’s arm. It was an extremely odd sensation; not exactly painful, but certainly not pleasant either. Finally the vampire allowed Adam to break free.

“What the hell was that?” he cried. “What happened to her? You said you could save her!”

“We did save her, jackass,” said the man, standing up and calmly brushing his hands on his pants. “You preserved her soul before she could move on to wherever we monsters go when we die here. Now she’s portable. You can carry her back to earth.”

“Back…back to earth?” repeated Adam, stunned.

The vampire grinned and held his hand out.

“The name’s Benny,” he said cordially. “I heard you’ve been looking for me. I’m the one who can help you get out of this place.”

Adam was too shocked to take the hand that had been offered to him. He could not believe it. After all of this time, the elusive Benny had finally found them, but he could not even be happy about it, because Emma…

“But what did you mean?” he asked, trying to understand. “How is she safe?”

“Only humans can make it through the portal out of Purgatory,” Benny explained impatiently. “Non-humans need to be carried out, and the only way to do that is for the human, that being you in this case chief, to take the monster soul into himself. When you get back to earth, you need to find her remains, release the soul over them, do a little more fancy talking in Latin, and then poof! You get your friend back.”

“But I don’t know where she’s buried. I don’t even know _if_ she’s buried.”

“You should be able to find her body, if it still exists. Her soul will pull you towards it. She ever tell you who killed her?”

As if Adam could forget that story.

“Yeah.”

“Was it a hunter?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you might run into a little trouble, brother. Most hunters burn the bodies of the monsters they kill. If there’s no body, there’s nothing to anchor her soul to earth. She would just come back here if you let her out.”

“This is a…special circumstance,” said Adam, hoping desperately that it was true. “Her uncle killed her. He and her father might have wanted to bury her instead of burning her.”

“Well, I hope for your sake that you’re right. You seemed pretty attached to that Amazon.”

“She’s my niece.”

Benny’s eyebrows rose.

“I assume you’re not the uncle that killed her?” he stated curiously.

“No, that was my brother. But he only shot her because she was trying to kill her father, our older brother. She’s changed since then.”

Adam did not know why he was explaining himself to the vampire.

“Look, it doesn’t matter. You said you could get us out.”

“Yep.”

“What’s it going to cost me?”

Benny looked taken aback.

“What do you mean, cost you?”

“It seems like everyone here has an agenda, and I want to know what yours is. What do you want in exchange for showing me the way out?”

Adam suspected that the vampire wanted another ride back to earth. He hoped so, anyway. That would be the easiest situation to deal with. He could just take the monster back to earth and release his soul into a random ditch somewhere, so that he would not be able to hurt anyone. But Benny surprised him by chuckling.

“I don’t want anything, kid,” he said. “Apparently it’s become my job to escort humans out of this place.”

“So…you don’t want a ride out?” asked Adam, even more suspicious now. “Or, I don’t know, a free drink of my blood or something?”

The vampire’s face hardened.

“I don’t feed off of humans,” he said. “Like I said, I don’t want anything from you.”

“So why help me?”

A sad smile crept onto Benny’s features.

“Because this place hasn’t stolen my humanity back yet,” he said softly. “I’m sure you heard that I got out for a while. Before I escaped, I really got to know my ticket out. Human by the name of Dean Winchester.”

Adam jumped slightly at the sound of his brother’s name. He supposed that he should not be surprised that out of almost seven billion people on the planet, Dean would be the first human to land himself in Purgatory. He was a bit surprised that he had consented to work with a vampire though. Dean had seemed pretty prejudiced when he had known him. Benny, lost in his thoughts and memories, did not notice Adam’s reaction.

“I became good friends with Dean,” continued the oblivious vampire. “He was a good man and an even better friend, to me and his angel buddy. He reminded me why I swore off killing humans in the first place. And then I lived in the human world again. I got to know some good people, got a little bit more of my humanity back. So you want to know why I’m helping you? Because I can. Because you don’t belong here. Because you probably don’t deserve this place. Because you’re human.”

Adam did not know what to say for a long moment. If he was telling the truth, then Dean had trusted this guy enough to set him loose on earth. That should be good enough for Adam. But then he remembered something.

“Wait, he said. “If you got out and started kissing babies and rescuing kittens, how did you end up back here? Who killed you?”

Benny’s eyes were a million miles away again. He took a long time to answer.

“Living back there,” he began at last. “It wore me down. I didn’t belong, not with the vampires, and it was too hard to be around the humans most of the time. I just always felt alone. Here, I know my place. I know this life, and I’m good at it. So when Dean’s little brother managed to get himself stuck here, and Dean asked me to come back so that I could help him get out, I said yes. I owed Dean that much. So I let him kill me, when I got back here, it felt too good to leave. So I stayed. Satisfied?”

“You mean Sam was here too?” asked Adam in shock. Benny looked startled, then wary.

“You know the Winchesters?” he asked cautiously.

“Yeah,” said Adam numbly. “I’m their brother.”

Benny laughed coldly in disbelief.

“Right, and I’m their grandma,” he said. “Boy, I wasn’t born yesterday. The Winchesters only have one other brother, and he’s stuck in the most secure part of hell.”

Adam was surprised that his brothers had even mentioned him to Benny. Dean must really have gotten close to him.

“That’s me,” he said earnestly. “I’m Adam. I was possessed by the archangel Michael during the apocalypse and locked away in the Cage with him, Lucifer, and Sam.”

The look on Benny’s face slowly changed from blatant disbelief to confused incredulity.

“Then how did you make it out?” he asked.

“I think Michael helped me,” Adam explained. “He and Lucifer are both still trapped, but I think that he managed to shove me out somehow. And then I sort of followed what I thought was Sam’s voice up through hell until I found a doorway to this place, where I found Emma. We’ve been looking for you pretty much ever since.”

“Well I’ll be damned,” said Benny, looking intently at Adam’s face. “You do look a bit like Dean. And I guess it’s possible that you heard Sam while he was down in hell.”

“Sam was in hell?” Adam repeated in alarm.

“Relax brother; he’s fine. He was on a mission to save his friend Bobby Singer, whose soul was in the deep fryer. The reaper he booked his trip through got killed, so I had to step in and show them the way out. But Sam made it.”

After letting out a relieved breath, Adam could not help but feel a little hurt that his brother had not even bothered to look for him in hell. Perhaps he had not wanted to poke at the Cage, for fear of releasing its other occupants.

“I guess I have all the more reason to get you out now,” said Benny thoughtfully. “I can give Dean another brother back. He blames himself for what happened to you, you know.”

Adam looked at him sharply.

“It wasn’t his fault,” he said firmly.

“I wouldn’t know. But I do know that Dean has a rather frustrating habit of taking responsibility for everything.” Benny sighed. “He probably blames himself for me staying here, too.”

They were both silent for a moment before confusion overtook Benny’s features again.

“That Amazon girl; you said she was your niece?” he asked.

“Yeah, Emma. She’s Dean’s daughter. He didn’t tell you about her?”

“Nope,” said Benny thoughtfully. “Huh. Dean, a father. He’ll make a damn good one when you get back, if you really think his girl has changed.”

“I hope so.” Adam was still worried that his brothers had burned Emma’s corpse, and that she would be forced back into Purgatory, even when he got out.

“I guess we’d better get started then,” said Benny, shaking himself slightly before grinning at Adam. “Let’s get you back where you belong.”


	5. Chapter 5

“You said my brothers were okay when you last saw them?” Adam asked as he followed Benny through Purgatory.

“Dean was fine. Sam looked a little worse for wear.”

“What do you mean?”

Benny glanced at him thoughtfully.

“I’ll let your brothers explain that one to you,” he said. “It’s kind of a big deal, and it should probably be a family thing. But I will tell you that I think Sam can handle it. He may be a bit of a stick in the mud, but he is one tough customer.”

Adam raised his eyebrows.

“I take it you’re not his biggest fan?”

Benny chuckled.

“More like he isn’t mine. I don’t think he was real fond of the idea of his brother being friends with the likes of me.”

“I can’t imagine why,” said Adam wryly. “What with the fangs and all.”

“Says the man carrying an Amazon in his arm,” retorted Benny, not seeming to be offended by the comment.

The reminder made Adam glance down, scratching absently at the glowing patch of skin under the sleeve of his jacket. The more time that passed, the more unpleasant the writhing sensation became. But he would have cut his arm off if it saved Emma. He just hoped that there was still a chance of helping her.

“It’ll be fine,” said Benny, noticing Adam’s concern.

“I thought you said you knew my family,” said Adam with a humorless laugh. “It doesn’t sound like the Winchester curse has lifted since I left.”

“I guess not,” Benny chuckled.

“It’s just…I let my family down so badly.”

Even now, centuries later, Adam could remember those brief days he’d had with his brothers on earth. He had let Zachariah turn him against them, see them as the enemy, so he had treated them with nothing but bitterness and spite. He remembered the despair and hopelessness written all over Dean’s features, could still see the sadness and exhaustion in Sam’s eyes as he begged Adam to trust him, to not let him throw his life and the world away for the angels. But he had not listened.

“I just don’t want to let my family down again.” Adam was talking to himself more than Benny, but the vampire was still listening closely.

“Huh,” he said with a smirk.

“What?”

“Nothing. It’s just, the more time I spend with you, the more you remind me of Dean. You know, putting his family before everything else; blaming himself for things that weren’t his fault.”

Adam glanced up at Benny, who gave him a reassuring wink before turning back to the invisible path they were following. The two of them lapsed into a comfortable silence. Adam wondered when his life had gotten so strange. All he had wanted once was to go to school, be a doctor, marry a nice girl, and have a few kids. Nothing special. But here he was, half a millennium later, twice dead and following a vampire through monster heaven with the spirit of his Amazonian niece embedded in his arm, so that he could find his way back to his demon hunting half-brothers. He couldn’t have made up a story as bizarre as that if he had tried.

Adam was so lost in his thoughts that he almost ran into Benny when the vampire drew to a halt.

“What is it?” he asked cautiously.

Benny grinned, pointing up at the short cliff in front of them. Adam tilted his head back and his mouth fell open. A shimmering blue portal had ripped itself open in the air at the top of the hill. Adam could feel himself gravitating towards it, as if it were sucking him in.

“That’s your doorway home, brother.”

“Just like that?” asked Adam. It did not seem possible that after centuries of captivity, freedom was just a few yards away.

“Just like that,” replied Benny. He clapped Adam on the shoulder and gave him a gentle shove towards the portal.

Adam took a few steps forward and then bit his lip, struggling. He had seen how fond Benny was of Dean, and if his brother felt even half as strongly about the vampire, then Dean had lost a good friend. And after how much Benny had helped Adam himself, it did not feel right to just leave him here. He turned back.

“Come with me.” He found himself having to shout over the sound of the wind that the portal had generated. “You don’t deserve this place, man. Let me help you.”

Benny just gave him a sad smile and shook his head.

“I told you brother; I don’t belong up there. I appreciate you trying to help, but honestly, I’m happier here.”

Adam stared at him searchingly for a moment. He could see that he had no chance of changing the vampire’s mind. He nodded.

“Now go; get back to your brothers. God only knows what kind of trouble they’ve managed to get themselves into while I’ve been gone.”

Adam could not argue with that, so he just gave Benny a small grin and shook his hand.

“Thank you,” he said earnestly, before turning back to the hill. He was nearly to the top when a shout from behind stopped him.

“And Adam!” Benny called. “Make sure Dean knows I wanted to stay here. Tell him from me that none of this is his fault.”

Adam nodded and waved. He glanced around at the thick woods of Purgatory, getting a last look because he fervently hoped that he would never see the place again. Then he closed his eyes and stepped into the bright blue light of the portal.

ooooooooooooooooo

Oddly, Adam did not feel like he was moving, but rather that the entire world was rushing past him at the speed of light. The heat and wind and raw energy bore down upon him and he wrapped his arms around his head in an attempt to shelter himself. But then the storm was over, and he was surrounded by stillness.

Adam looked around, dazed, and his heart sank. He was surrounded by more trees, clearly deep in a forest. He assumed that something had gone wrong with the portal, and that he was still trapped in Purgatory. But then he took a closer look, and his spirits rose. These woods looked different, tamer and less menacing. And the sun, which had been about to set when he had left Purgatory, was now high in the sky.

The sky. Adam stared at it through the trees. The sky in Purgatory had been gray and colorless, not like it was here. He had forgotten just how spectacular that particular shade of blue was. It began to sink in that he had made it; he was home. He began to shake, overwhelmed by the rush of emotions and release of tension. He threw back his head and let out a wild cry of victory, the first shout he had given out of happiness, not torment or fear, in centuries.

As he began to pull himself together, some of Adam’s euphoria faded. He looked around again, realizing that he had no idea where he was or how to find any sign of civilization, much less his brothers. Fortunately, he was spared from worrying about it much longer.

“Hey, you alright buddy?”

Adam whipped around in alarm to see a gruff man dressed in deep-woods camouflage with a rifle gripped loosely in his hands. Adam could not help staring. It was a human, an actual, flesh-and-blood human.

“I asked if you were alright.”

The man slung his gun over his shoulder and approached Adam cautiously, as if he were a frightened animal.

“Did someone hurt you?”

Adam finally pulled himself together enough to answer.

“No,” he said hurriedly. “No, I’m fine. I, uh, just got lost.”

The older man looked askance at Adam’s bloodstained and torn clothes.

“My name’s Adam,” he said, trying to ease his suspicions.

“Ethan,” said the man slowly, reaching out a hand for Adam to shake.

“Nice to meet you, Ethan.”

“Huh.”

Adam did not know what else to say, so he simply got to the point.

“Can you show me out of here?” he asked.

Ethan eyed him for a moment before shrugging.

“May as well. Hunting’s been crap on this trip anyway.”

“Thank you,” said Adam gratefully. The hunter shrugged off the gratitude and took Adam by the shoulder gently.

“Come on kid,” he said as he began to lead him through the trees. “Maybe on the way you can tell me how you managed to get yourself lost ten miles from the nearest road.”

Free at last, and faced with the prospect of seeing his brothers and Emma again, the miles seemed like nothing to Adam. He managed to avoid Ethan’s questions with basic lies and half-truths, and soon enough the older man realized that he would not get any satisfactory answers and simply stopped asking. And soon enough, the two of them had emerged from the woods onto an empty road, beside which was parked a large black truck, faded by age and use.

“Can I give you a ride somewhere?” Ethan asked.

Adam had not given the matter much thought. He still had no idea how to find his brothers, since they were unlikely to be listed in any phone book. He could try to find Emma’s body, but he was not feeling the tug that Benny said he would. He thought that he might be too far away, considering the fact that Emma had died in Seattle, and Ethan had just told him that they were in Maine.

Then he remembered Bobby Singer. Benny had said something about him being in hell, but it sounded like Sam had managed to rescue him. If Bobby was still out there, he had a permanent address, and he would be able to tell Adam where Sam and Dean were.

“Uh, Sioux Falls South Dakota, I guess,” he said to Ethan. “I know you can’t take me the whole way, but maybe you could get me started in the right direction?”

Ethan sighed, considering.

“My daughter lives in Ohio,” he said at last. “It’s been a while since I visited her. I can take you as far as Cleveland, but then you’re going to have to find your own way.”

Adam was already amazed by Ethan’s generosity, so he quickly assured him that it was no problem. He had never hitch-hiked before, because his mother would have killed him, but it had always been something that he wanted to try. He climbed gratefully into the car. The old pickup felt like heaven to Adam. Ethan glanced at him curiously as he settled back into the stained seat, head leaned back blissfully.

“Kid, what the hell happened to you?” he asked bemusedly.

There was no way that Adam could sum that up in a way that would make this grizzled old hunter understand, so he just grinned tiredly.

“Trust me, Ethan. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

Ethan raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.

“Besides,” added Adam. “I just really like this truck.”

The old hunter chuckled, and glanced around the cab before starting the engine and pulling onto the road.

“Yeah, it’s served me well. I’ve had it for nearly eight years now. I got it cheap from a police auction down in Lincoln. It was found abandoned at some old warehouse; had a whole arsenal in the back, bunch of fake IDs in the glove compartment. The police department sold it after no one claimed it for a year. I’ve always wondered what the previous owner did, and why he left it. Guess I’ll never find out.”

“Guess not,” replied Adam, though he suspected that the truck’s last owner had been a hunter of the more supernatural variety. He gazed out of the window as the trees rushed by. Despite the fact that he had just gotten into a truck with a fully armed stranger, he felt more secure than he had in centuries. He leaned back and closed his eyes, ready to sleep peacefully at last.

ooooooooooooooooo

It took Adam a surprisingly short time to hitch-hike from Ohio through Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. Ethan’s daughter had let him shower at her house, and had even given him some of her husband’s old clothes to wear so that he did not look like he had been living in the woods for a month. People were usually happy to give him rides, and he was passing into South Dakota within a week of escaping Purgatory.

Adam was only a day away from Sioux Falls, riding shotgun in the old Toyota of a college student named Rachel. She had picked him up on her way home from school for the summer. Adam had been surprised, because it had been getting dark when she pulled over.

“I could be a serial killer,” he had told her teasingly.

“Well if you are, could you just get it over with now?” she had replied. “I hate suspense.”

Adam had laughed and the two of them spent the next three hours either talking or in comfortable silence. They were only an hour away from Rachel’s house when the girl glanced up casually and then slammed on the brakes, bringing them to a skidding halt by the side of the road.

“What? What is it?” asked Adam in alarm.

Rachel did not answer; she just threw her door open and climbed out of the car. Adam did the same and followed her gaze upward, his mouth falling open as he did so. He could see why she had stopped.

“Do you think it’s a meteor shower?” she asked in a small voice.

Adam stared at the hundreds of lights streaking down from the sky. They could have been meteors, except for the fact that there were far too many of them and they were far too close.

“No,” he replied softly.

The ground trembled lightly. And then again. And again. Whatever those things were, they were touching down.

“We should get to my house,” said Rachel, frightened.

Adam could not disagree, but he could not shake the feeling that his brothers were involved in whatever was going on. This had to be supernatural, and it seemed like the kind of thing that they dealt with. Or caused.

“I can’t,” he said. “I have to find my brothers.”

“Find them later!” cried Rachel. “It’s the freaking apocalypse out here!”

“I highly doubt it,” said Adam. “I’ve seen the apocalypse, and it did not involve UFOs falling from the sky.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Look, just come with me. We can find your brothers in the morning, but I need to get to my family and I don’t want to leave you here.”

Adam glanced back and forth between her face and whatever was still falling from the sky. It really was a good idea to try to find some kind of shelter, and he probably would not have been able to find Sam and Dean or even Bobby that night anyway. He nodded, and followed Rachel back to the car.

They had been driving for twenty minutes when a dark figure suddenly emerged onto the road. Rachel slammed on the brakes for the second time that night, and Adam got out of the car before she had the chance to open her door.

“Lock the car behind me,” he told her as he got out. “He could be anybody.”

Rachel looked like she was about to protest, but she had apparently been through too much that night to be up to dealing with another potentially dangerous stranger. She nodded, and Adam slowly approached the man in the middle of the road.

“Hello?” he called cautiously.

Something about the man’s profile was extremely familiar, and when the figure turned to face him, Adam understood why. His mouth fell open with a gasp.

“Castiel?”


	6. Chapter 6

Adam had never given much thought to the angel that had befriended his brothers. He had been there when Adam had woken up after his resurrection, but the two of them had never really spoken. Castiel had seemed more interested in talking Dean down from the ledge. But he had clearly been a good friend of the Winchesters, good enough for Lucifer to occasionally wear his face while torturing Sam. And now here he was, stumbling out into the middle of a road looking scared and devastated and alone, while God only knew what was falling from the sky.

“Castiel?” he repeated, drawing closer. “What’s going on? Are you alright?”

The angel stared at him, looking dumbfounded and terrified, then began backing away slowly.

“You can’t be,” he said softly, shaking his head. “Michael-”

“No Castiel, it’s me; Adam,” he said, raising his hands in an effort to be as non-threatening as possible. The other man was clearly freaked out, and the appearance of what he must have thought was an extremely dangerous archangel did not seem to be helping matters. “I’m totally human, all archangels have left the building. I got out of hell, but Michael and Lucifer are still trapped. It’s okay.”

Castiel stared at him for a long moment before shrugging and relaxing slightly. Adam was not sure if the angel believed him, or if he could just not bring himself to care anymore.

“Well, you may not be Michael,” he said at last. “But everything is certainly not okay.”

Adam’s stomach dropped. He studied Castiel more carefully. The angel looked heartbroken and lost, and Adam was terrified to find out why.

“Cas,” he said, trying out his brothers’ nickname for the angel. “What is it? Are Sam and Dean-”

“Dean is fine,” said Castiel tonelessly. “Sam probably isn’t but I don’t think he’s dead. I am nearly certain that I got Dean to him in time.”

Adam wanted to shake some straight answers out of Castiel, but he could see that the man was in deep shock, so he made an effort to soften his voice when he spoke.

“I need to find them.”

“Yes, so do I,” replied Castiel. “Unfortunately, I lack the means to do so. I lack the means to do anything.”

The frustration and bitterness in his voice startled Adam.

“What are you talking about?” he asked. “You’re an angel.”

Castiel laughed humorlessly.

“Not anymore,” he said darkly. “I trusted the wrong person, and I paid the price. Along with every single member of my family.”

“That sounds familiar,” said Adam, trying to draw an explanation from Cas, who just scoffed.

“No, Adam,” he said. “Your brothers managed to stop you from destroying the world through your bad decision. But even they couldn’t save the world from me. Not this time.”

“Cas.” Adam reached out and grabbed the angel by the shoulders firmly, catching his blue eyes with his own. “Look, whatever you did, whatever is happening, you’re still alive, which means you can fix it. So pull yourself together, and tell me what’s happening. Start with what the hell is falling from the sky.”

“Heaven.”

“Sorry?”

“Every single angel in heaven has been expelled, and is falling.”

“Falling as in falling to earth, or falling as in losing their angel powers?”

“Possibly both. They are certainly falling to earth, but how much of their abilities will have been stripped from them is uncertain. I do know that all of mine are gone, along with my Grace.”

Adam stared at him, and then back up at the sky. There were fewer streaks of golden light now. If they really were angels, then most of them must have fallen already. Fallen. Adam thought back to all of the angels that he had encountered. Aside from Castiel, all of the angels he had met or heard of were dicks, and if all of them were forced to stay on earth, potentially with their smiting powers still intact…

“Damn.”

“You could say that.”

The two of them faced each other in silence for a moment. Then Adam shook himself.

“Okay,” he said, dropping the hands that had still been on Castiel’s shoulders. “Okay. Well, clearly this is something that needs to be addressed, but we need to find Sam and Dean first. I know you can’t find them with your angel powers, but do you know where they might be, or where they’ll go?”

“You were in Purgatory.”

“What?”

Castiel was staring at Adam’s arm, and had clearly not been listening. Adam realized that Cas must have seen the bright patch of skin that covered the place where Emma’s soul rested. He reflexively clamped a hand over the spot.

“Oh, yeah, I was,” he said. “The door from hell that I used led to Purgatory, and then I got out through the portal to earth.”

“With a passenger. Is it Benny?”

“Uh, no. I met Benny, and he helped me, but he wanted to stay behind. It’s actually Dean’s daughter, Emma.”

Castiel stared at him blankly.

“Dean doesn’t have a daughter,” he stated, confused.

“He didn’t tell you about her? She’s an Amazon, she was born in 2012 and killed by Sam when she was a day old.”

“Oh.” Castiel looked thoughtful, and a little chagrined.

“What?”

“I believe that I was an amnesiac at the time.”

Now it was Adam’s turn to stare.

“Okay, clearly we both have a lot of catching up to do,” he said. “But why don’t we do it on the way to finding Sam and Dean? Do you have any idea where they might be?”

“I do not know how to find the church where they are currently located, but I know where they will be headed. They live in a bunker in Kansas.”

“A bunker?”

“Yes.”

“Sounds cozy,” Adam muttered to himself before addressing Castiel again. “Anyway, we can’t get to Kansas tonight, so why don’t we ask if we can stay with my friend Rachel’s family for the night, and then start trying to find Sam and Dean in the morning?”

He waved back towards the car, where Rachel was sitting, glancing back and forth between the now fading angel lights and the two men on the street. She still looked freaked, but she seemed to relax when she saw how familiar the two of them were. She graciously agreed to give both Adam and Cas a ride to her house, and spots on her living room floor for the night. She also studiously ignored them while they were filling each other in on everything that had happened since the apocalypse, but Adam suspected that this was done less out of courtesy and more out of the desire to preserve her sanity.

Adam could not believe everything that his brothers had managed to get up to in the years he had been in hell. He was not entirely satisfied with the explanation of how Sam had gotten out of the Cage. Apparently both Castiel and Dean had worked to save him, but not Adam. He was glad that his brother had not had to endure as much hell as him, but it did sting that none of them had even looked for him since. He was not sorry to have missed the practically unkillable man-eating tyrants that had tried to take over the world while he was gone though.

Cas had been surprised by Adam’s account of how he escaped. He had not thought it possible for the angels to get even a human soul out of the Cage. He hypothesized that Death, who was apparently a real, tangible, surprisingly sarcastic individual, had left an opening when he retrieved Sam’s soul for Dean. He had not however, had any insight as to the existence of Emma’s body.

“Sam and Dean never even told me about her,” he said ruefully. “Either they didn’t think it was significant, or the memory was too painful. But whatever the reason, I cannot tell you whether or not you will be able to restore her.”

Either way, it looked like Adam was destined to carry his niece for a little while longer. It was unlikely that he would be able to find her body without the Winchester’s help, but with all that was going on, finding the time for a road trip from Kansas to Seattle would be difficult. He hoped that it would not be too long though. Not only did he miss his niece’s company, but her presence in his arm was growing more painful by the day.

ooooooooooooooooo

Adam and Castiel spent the night at Rachel’s place with her and her parents, who were too alarmed by the fact that thousands of UFOs had just touched down to care about their daughter bringing two random, scruffy strangers into the house. The news was on constantly, but all that it told them was that no one knew anything, but it was worldwide and did not seem to be an attack. It seemed as though everyone had a theory, but none of them were even close to the bizarre truth.

Rachel was also kind enough to drive Cas and Adam to the bus station the next morning, not to mention giving them money for their tickets. She refused Adam’s promise to pay her back someday.

“I don’t know what it is about you two,” she said. “You might be crazy, and you might not, but something tells me that you guys are important in this whole new insane grand scheme of things. So let me do this for you. And…please don’t ever contact me again.”

They agreed and waved at her as they boarded the bus to Kansas together. The bus ride was not particularly scenic, but it was fairly uneventful for the first fifty or so miles.

“Adam?” asked Castiel abruptly, sounding alarmed.

“Yeah?”

“I think I may be ill.”

Adam, who had been counting the mile markers as they passed by his window, glanced over at him in concern. The fallen angel was clutching his midsection, squirming uncomfortably. Adam placed a hand on his forehead, feeling for a temperature. Cas had taken off his trenchcoat and suit jacket because of the heat, but he did not seem to have a fever.

“Does your stomach hurt?”

“No, not exactly. The feeling is lower, and is more like an extremely uncomfortable pressure.”

Adam stared at him for a moment, trying to figure out what kind of illness would match his symptoms, before realization dawned and he burst out laughing.

“What? What is it?” asked Castiel, more concerned now. “Is it lethal?”

Adam shook his head, pulling himself together. Cas had been through enough recently, and there was no need to stress him out over nothing.

“No, Cas, you’re fine. It’s perfectly normal.”

“But what is it?”

“Your bladder is full. You need to go to the bathroom, buddy.”

Poor Castiel looked even more alarmed than he had when he thought he had a deadly disease. Adam tried not to smile as he gently nudged the man out of his seat and directed him towards the bathroom at the back of the bus.

“It’s fine Cas,” he said gently. “It’s a fairly intuitive process. You’ll figure it out.”

“But I’ve never-”

“Cas, two year olds can do it, I’m sure you can too.”

The man still looked skeptical, but he began to walk towards the bathroom, shoulders squared like he was marching into battle.  Hell, he probably wished he were marching into battle at that point. He did not seem to notice the odd looks that he was drawing from the other passengers. Adam settled back into his seat, hoping that they would find Sam and Dean before Castiel needed anything else explained to him.

The squeak of the bathroom door opening drew Adam’s attention to the back of the bus. He did a double take, standing quickly and hurrying down the cramped aisle to get to the fallen angel.

“Cas, why aren’t you wearing your pants?” he hissed, trying to ignore the people around them, who were staring at Castiel, clad only in American flag-patterned boxers and his button-down shirt.

“They got wet,” the other man said sheepishly. “I accidently dropped them in the toilet.”

Adam glanced past him into the stall and saw a soaking wet wad of black material lying in the corner.

“Why did you take them off in the first place?” asked Adam incredulously.

Castiel just shifted uncomfortably, so Adam sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose, and closed his eyes. Neither of them had a spare set of clothes, but there was no way that he was letting Cas put on urine-soaked pants.

“Are your boxers dry at least?” he asked. Cas nodded. “Good.”

He walked back to their seats and retrieved the dirty tan trenchcoat that the other man loved so much, draping it around Castiel’s shoulders and doing up the buttons. It looked like the former angel was wearing a dress, but at least you could no longer see his extremely patriotic underwear.

“I’m sorry, Adam,” said Castiel quietly.

Adam looked up, registering the shame on Cas’s face. He felt a rush of sympathy. This man had been an angel, a fearsome warrior of God; he had watched over humanity for millennia, but he had always been aloof from it. He had never truly endeavored to understand it until a few years ago, but even then he did not grasp what it was really like to be a human. And now the poor man had been thrust into the mortal world without any idea of how to handle it, and he was forced to rely on a boy he barely knew and had little reason to trust.

“Hey, it’s okay Cas,” he said gently, leading Castiel back to their seats. “You’ll get the hang of this human thing before you know it.”

“Thank you.”

The fallen angel left it at that, and Adam was happy to let the topic drop. He glowered at the few people that were still staring, and they quickly averted their eyes. He walked back to the bathroom to shove Cas’s wet pants into the small trash receptacle. They probably could have been salvaged, but Adam did not want to take the time to stop at a Laundromat, and they were certainly not going to be carrying the soaked slacks around with them. When he sat back down however, Adam could not help leaning towards the fallen angel.

“I have to ask,” he said. “What’s with the underwear?”

Castiel glanced at him in surprise and confusion.

“What do you mean?”

“Dude, it looks like Miss America threw up on them.”

Cas looked down at his lap, as if he could see through the tan material of his coat to the offending boxers.

“It was what my vessel had on the day he accepted me,” he said, sounding mildly indignant. “I did not choose them.”

Adam grinned and let the matter drop. They travelled in silence for several minutes.

“Do you really think they’re that bad?”

ooooooooooooooooo

Castiel and Adam spent the rest of the trip either in companionable silence or talking about inane or human things. Neither of them wanted to think about how bad things might be about to get, so they focused on things like bees and animal testing and cartoons, and how close it was acceptable to stand to someone without making them uncomfortable. Neither of them mentioned the bathroom incident again. Now that Castiel understood the signs, he could take care of himself. He already knew what hunger felt like, so he ate without needing to ask Adam if he was dying of a rare disease again. Adam could not help taking a liking to the strange man. He could see why his brothers, who did not seem like the type to form many meaningful attachments, had become such close friends with him.

The two of them made steady progress south, and arrived in Kansas before nightfall. Finding the mysterious bunker was the harder part. The bus had dropped them off in the town that Cas believed was closest to it, but with no money for a cab, and very few people willing to pick up two hitch-hikers, especially after everything that had happened, they had to walk the rest of the way. It turned out that Cas had a terrible sense of direction without his angel powers. They spent hours following random roads that led nowhere.

It was almost midnight and they were both tired, stumbling occasionally from exhaustion, when they rounded a corner on a hill and Cas sighed with relief.

“This is it,” he said at last, stopping in front of a grimy set of steps that led down to a door embedded in the side of the hill.

“What, this?” Adam asked, staring up at the building before them. It looked more like an abandoned factory than a super-secret lair. But the familiar ’67 Chevrolet Impala that Adam had learned to drive on was parked beside the entrance, a testimony to the fact that the Winchesters were indeed inside. “It doesn’t look like much.”

“It is far more impressive on the inside. Also, Dean seems to be very fond of it, so it would probably be wise not to speak unkindly about it in his presence,” his companion replied.

The comment about Dean reminded Adam that he would be seeing his brothers within minutes. After all this time and travelling, they were really here, just a knock away from a reunion. Adam was struck by a sudden reluctance to see them. He did not know how they would react to his presence, and he had no idea what to say to them. He had been imaging this moment for so long that it would probably be a disappointment no matter how it turned out. And there was a tiny, bitter voice nagging at the back of his mind, refusing to let him forget that his brothers had abandoned him to Michael and Lucifer.

But Cas did not give him the chance to back out. He strode down the steps and banged his fist several times on the faded door. When there was no response, he knocked again, louder, and shouted.

“Dean! Sam! It’s Castiel! I-”

The door flew open and Cas was immediately hit in the face with a stream of what Adam assumed was holy water, launched from the bucket in Dean’s hands. When that elicited no reaction, Sam, who had come up behind Dean, dumped some other kind of liquid on him. When this too failed to produce a response, Sam pulled a silver knife from his pocket and drew it gently across the exposed skin of the forearm that Cas had extended towards him.

The two Winchesters watched Castiel anxiously for a moment, and when he remained unchanged, their faces split into tired grins and Dean pulled Cas into a relieved hug. That was when he noticed Adam, who had been watching the scene with some trepidation, wondering what kind of tests he was in for. Dean shouted, pushing Cas behind him and pulling out his gun, which he trained on Adam, finger tightening on the trigger and a gunshot shattering the silence of the night.


	7. Chapter 7

Adam had always had fast reflexes. When he was little he used them for sports. In high school he had used them to dodge the bullies that were always plaguing the other “nerds” like him. In the Cage he used them to avoid the hellhounds, with varying degrees of success, and in Purgatory he used them to keep Emma and himself alive.

But that night, staring down the barrel of his brother’s gun, Adam’s reflexes failed him. He froze, and simply watched as Dean fired the shot. The burst of pain in his shoulder jarred him out of his daze, and he dropped to the ground, rolling out of the line of fire.

“The next one won’t hit your shoulder you son of a bitch!” he heard Dean shout.

“Dean stop!” yelled Cas. “It’s him; it’s Adam.”

“It can’t be! Adam’s in hell,” Dean argued, running to Adam’s side and keeping the gun directed at his chest.

Adam simply lay still, clutching his shoulder. He knew that the wound was not fatal, but that did not stop it from sending waves of pain through his body with every heartbeat.

“He got out,” said Castiel insistently, tugging on Dean’s gun arm. “Dean, it’s all right. I’ve been with him all day. It’s really him; he’s not a demon or a shapeshifter, and he’s not possessed by Michael.”

“He could be another ghoul.”

“No, he couldn’t,” Sam interjected, staring dazedly at Adam. He took a few tentative steps toward his little brother. “Ghouls take the shape of the last body they fed on. When Adam and I went to hell, there were no bodies.”

Adam lifted his bloody hands in a gesture of surrender, gasping with each breath from the pain. Dean stared down at him for a moment before pulling two flasks out of his jacket pocket and splashing their contents on Adam. When this got no reaction, the angry lines of Dean’s face softened into confusion and disbelief. He glanced at Castiel again, and when the fallen angel nodded, he lowered his gun.

“Adam?” he asked softly, kneeling at his brother’s side.

Adam nodded slowly. Dean reached out to grasp Adam’s good shoulder, gently pulling him up into a sitting position. He gathered a fistful of Adam’s muddy jacket as if to verify that his lost brother was really there. Sam dropped to the ground as well and reached out to his little brother. Adam gripped Sam’s arm and stared up at him, seeking the familiar comfort of his brother’s presence, which he had so missed for the last few centuries.

“Sam,” he whispered, taking in every detail of the man’s face. Cas had told him that Sam was sick, but he looked healthy enough, certainly much better than he had ever looked in hell. Adam let out a relieved breath, realizing how worried he had been.

“It’s him, Dean,” said Sam with a wondering smile, his eyes never leaving Adam’s.

He leaned forward and pulled Adam into a tight hug. Despite the pain in his shoulder, Adam returned the embrace, his eyes prickling with unshed tears as it began to sink in that he had made it, that he was really here, with his brothers again after all this time.

As the situation seemed to fully dawn on Sam, panic filled his expression. He scooped Adam into his arms and rose quickly, turning to Dean.

“Dean, it’s him!” he said urgently. It’s really him, and he’s hurt. We have to help him!”

That seemed to remind Dean that he had just shot their little brother. He jumped into action, running through the door that Cas was holding open and shouting for someone named Kevin to prepare the sickbay, followed quickly into the bunker by Sam, who was still holding Adam.

“You don’t have to carry me like a baby,” Adam protested, finally having found his voice. It was not the first thing he had expected to say to his brother after so many years, but that was what came out. He was surprised by how much it felt like they had never been separated. Sam raised his eyebrows and did not loosen his grip. “Come on, man, you’ve seen me holding my own intestines, you know I can handle a simple bullet wound.”

Sam stopped abruptly, staring down at him while Dean and Cas moved deeper into the bunker.

“You remember hell?” he asked.

“A lot of it. Why, don’t you?”

“I…I didn’t, when my soul was first restored, because of this wall that Death put up in my head, but I would get flashbacks sometimes. And then Cas broke the wall, and it almost killed me, but I managed to pull myself together. For a while I remembered everything, but it was too much. I, uh, I started to hallucinate. I would see Lucifer everywhere, and eventually it got so bad that I couldn’t sleep at all. I almost died of exhaustion, but then Cas did this thing-”

“He took your insanity away from you,” finished Adam. “He told me.”

“Yeah. Well, after that I didn’t have any more hallucinations, but I lost a lot of my memories too. There are parts of my time in hell, whole years and maybe even decades that I don’t remember at all.”

“But you remember some things?”

“I remember you, if that’s what you’re asking,” said Sam quietly.

“I never got to thank you,” said Adam. “You never stopped trying to protect me down there.”

Sam glanced away.

“Yeah, and what a great job I did,” he said bitterly. “I had to watch them rip you apart over and over. Then I couldn’t get you out when I was free. And now that you’re finally back, I let you get shot.”

“Sam-”

“Hey, what are you waiting for?” Dean stuck his head around the corner. “Bring the kid in here before he bleeds to death.”

Sam hurried forward, carrying Adam into what looked like an old-fashioned hospital ward. There were a dozen beds lined up along the walls, and Sam placed his little brother on the one closest to the entrance. Dean stepped forward and pulled off Adam’s jacket and shirt, exposing the small bullet hole in his left shoulder. But that was not all that was exposed. Dean froze suddenly, gazing down at his brother’s arm. Adam followed his gaze and winced. Dean was staring at the glowing patch of skin on his arm.

“Is that…Did you bring Benny’s soul from Purgatory?” asked Dean breathlessly.

Adam’s stomach lurched at the thought of answering the question. He did not want to crush the hope that had sprung up in his brother’s eyes. Castiel answered for him.

“It’s Emma’s soul, not Benny’s,” he informed Dean.

“Emma?” asked Sam in confusion.

“My daughter?” said Dean, sounding even more incredulous than Sam.

“That’s what Adam said.”

“The Amazon? She was a psychopath!” Sam exclaimed.

“She’s changed,” snapped Adam. “She doesn’t want to kill anyone anymore. She didn’t deserve Purgatory, not to mention the fact that she saved my life more than once, and helped me get out. The least I could do was give her a lift to the other side. But can we please talk about her later? In case you forgot, there’s still a bullet embedded in my shoulder.”

Dean grimaced guiltily and bent back over the wound.

“I’m sorry I shot you,” Dean said, casting an awkward glance at Adam’s face before focusing back on the bullet hole. Adam chuckled at his brother’s discomfort.

“Don’t worry, I only mind a little,” he replied, hissing in pain when Dean began digging for the bullet with a pair of tweezers. “Besides, I can only imagine what you must have thought I was.”

“Several possibilities crossed my mind,” Dean admitted, his face softening. “None of them were good.”

“Are those tweezers made of silver?” Adam asked suspiciously, gazing at the instrument in his oldest brother’s hand.

Dean grinned at him unapologetically.

“I already tested you with holy water and borax, silver was all that was left.”

“And do you feel better now?”

“Much, thanks.”

Dean’s face grew serious again after a moment, and he reached out to ruffle Adam’s hair.

“I’m glad you’re back Adam,” he said gruffly.

Adam smiled, knowing that such displays of affection from Dean were rare.

“Um, is no one going to tell me who he is?” asked the young man who was hanging back behind Castiel.

“Oh yeah, sorry Kevin,” said Sam. “Adam, this is Kevin Tran, prophet of the Lord. Kevin, meet Adam Milligan, Dean’s and my little brother.”

“Um, what?” Kevin asked.

“Half brother,” Adam clarified. “We have the same dad.”

“Which we didn’t know until we were adults, and Adam was dead,” added Dean.

“You were dead?” asked Kevin. He did not look all that surprised, and Adam wondered what other kinds of surprises he had been hit with in his life with the Winchesters.

“Yeah. I, uh, got eaten by ghouls,” said Adam, the memory freshened by having his brother digging around in his shoulder.

“Yeah, which then took his shape and tried to lure Sammy and me to our deaths,” said Dean, grinning triumphantly as he finally extracted the bullet from Adam’s shoulder.

Sam moved forward and began to suture the wound closed. Dean vanished for a moment and reappeared carrying a glass of water and a small bottle of pills. He shook two of them into his palm and offered them to his youngest brother, who eyed them dubiously.

“What are they?” he asked warily.

“Painkillers,” Dean replied innocently.

“They’re fine, Adam,” Sam assured him when he continued to hesitate. “They won’t impair your judgment or get you addicted. Dean keeps the good stuff to himself.”

Adam did not know Dean very well, but he trusted Sam implicitly. He swallowed the pills and sat back as Sam finished stitching his wound closed and covered it with a clean bandage.

“If you got eaten by ghouls, how did you end up in Purgatory?” asked Kevin, who still seemed to be struggling to figure out how all of the pieces of their rather complex family story fit together.

“That is a fair question,” said Dean. “When Sam got out of hell, his body just appeared in a field. Why did you have to go through God’s armpit?”

“Well from what Cas has told me, he pulled Sam out of hell, and then you got Death to restore his soul,” Adam began, glancing at the fallen angel for confirmation. When Castiel nodded, he went on. “It wasn’t like that for me. I got shoved out of the Cage, by Michael I think, but I still had to find my way out of hell itself. The first exit I found led to Purgatory. Benny said that it was the one that Sam used to rescue Bobby’s soul.”

“You met Benny?” asked Dean urgently.

“Yeah, he helped me get out.”

“And you didn’t bring him with you?”

The unmistakable accusation in Dean’s voice made Adam bristle.

“I tried,” he said angrily. “I did everything that I could to convince him to come with me, but he didn’t want to. He said that he knew that you would blame yourself for what happened to him, but he wanted to stay in Purgatory. He said he didn’t belong on earth.”

There was silence for a moment as everyone looked away from each other uncomfortably. Adam could not forget the last glimpse that he had gotten of Benny’s face. The vampire had not looked scared or uncertain, merely calm and resigned. But somehow that was worse. Because he had sentenced himself to an eternity in monster hell purely because he thought that there was no other place for him. There should have been a place for him.

“I am sorry, Dean,” said Adam quietly at last.

“It’s not your fault kid,” his brother replied softly. “If Benny didn’t want to come, there’s no way you could have convinced him. He is one stubborn bastard.”

Dean smiled contritely at Adam, who gave him a tentative grin in return. Adam could tell that this relationship was going to take more work than the one he had with Sam. But from everything that Sam had told him about their older brother, Dean was worth the effort.

“Of course, there is still the matter of the soul that Adam _did_ bring back,” said Sam after a moment.

“Yeah, Emma,” said Dean, shaking his head in disbelief. “In all of Purgatory, how did you manage to find my kid?”

“She found me actually. She had come to check out the door to hell, and she was there when I climbed out. She tried to kill me at first-”

“Sounds familiar,” muttered Sam.

“But,” said Adam pointedly, talking over his brother. “She realized that we could work together. It pays to have a partner in Purgatory, and hers had just gotten killed. She offered to work with me, to help me try to get out, and I agreed. But I had also figured out pretty quickly that she was family.”

“How did that come up?” asked Dean. “I highly doubt that she introduced herself as Emma Winchester.”

“No. I asked her who killed her.”

Dean and Adam both tried and failed miserably to not look at Sam just then. Their brother crossed his arms over his chest, looking mildly uncomfortable.

“Anyway, the rest of the story came out pretty quickly after that. I didn’t tell her who I was until later though, when I was sure that she wasn’t holding any grudges.”

“And was she?” asked Sam. “Holding a grudge, I mean.”

“No, she wasn’t,” said Adam firmly. “It turns out that most Amazons are snobs, and the dead ones in Purgatory kicked her out of their super special society and left her to fend for herself because she never completed her first rite of passage, which was killing Dean. It’s them that she resents.”

Sam and Dean continued to look unconvinced. Adam sighed.

“Look, I wouldn’t have brought her if I thought she wanted to hurt you guys. She saved my life more than once back there. She even put herself between me and a black dog. She would have died if Benny hadn’t turned up and showed me how to store her in my arm. Does that sound like someone who’s acting?”

“No,” said Sam softly.

Adam caught his eye, and could tell that he was remembering their time together in hell, when Sam would throw himself in front of the hellhounds to spare his little brother.

“But I’m sorry Adam,” he continued. “We burned her body; there’s nothing for her soul to latch onto, to keep her here.”

“That’s not true,” said Dean.

“What?” asked Sam, turning to Dean in surprise.

“I didn’t torch her corpse. I told you I was going to, but then…I don’t know man, I just couldn’t do it. It felt wrong. I buried her.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It didn’t seem like a big deal. This was before we knew that monsters could be brought back to life; I didn’t think it was that significant.”

Sam stared at him for a moment. Adam could tell that he wasn’t sure whether to be mad or not. Evidently he decided that it was not worth arguing over, and he remained silent.

“So we can bring her back?” asked Adam hopefully.

Dean looked at him, his expression unreadable. Finally his face cracked into a tentative, hopeful smile.

“Yeah,” he said slowly. “I guess we can.”


	8. Chapter 8

“I don’t think I like this.”

Sam looked over at his little brother and laughed. Adam was clutching the armrests of his seat with a white-knuckled grip, his eyes pinched shut, except for the occasional peek out of the window of the plane. These glances just seemed to make him sicker, so he stopped looking fairly quickly.

“Yeah, Dean’s not real big on flying either. It doesn’t help that one of the only planes he’s ever been on almost went down.”

Sam felt a little guilty when Adam looked even more petrified, so he hurried to explain.

“It was kind of our fault. We were chasing this demon that liked to crash planes, and the exorcism got a little hairy. Everything turned out fine though.”

“There’s a demon that likes to crash planes?”

“Not anymore.”

“Well, that’s comforting.”

Sam grinned at the familiar sarcasm, but he could still see the fear in his little brother’s face as he tried to relax back into his seat. If he had known how much flying would bother Adam, he would not have suggested it as their best option for retrieving Emma. But it was a long trip from Kansas to Seattle, and time was precious in a world where angels had fallen, so he had thought that a flight of a couple of hours would be better than a drive of two days. Of course, that ruled Dean out as a member of the expedition, so it was just Sam and Adam. Unfortunately, it seemed as though Adam took after Dean as far as air travel went.

“You could try humming Metallica,” Sam suggested. “It seemed to help Dean a little.”

“I’ll be fine, Sam.”

Sam took the cue and stopped talking. He knew that Adam did not like to be pressed. He knew so much abut his little brother. He did not remember everything from his time in hell, but the clearest moments, the ones that were easiest to hold onto, were the ones with Adam. Adam, who he had not really gotten to know until they were both in perdition. Adam, who he would die to protect. Adam, who he had never expected to see again.

“Adam?” he asked quietly after several minutes of silence.

“Yeah?”

“I…I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I let you down.”

“When?”

Sam let out a hard chuckle.

“When didn’t I?” he asked bitterly. “I let you get possessed, then I dragged you to hell-”

“You dragged _Michael_ to hell, Sam,” Adam interrupted. “He didn’t give you much of a choice. I was the one who was stupid enough to walk into the angels’ trap.”

“Maybe. But that doesn’t change the fact that I left you in _hell_ after I got out.”

“Yeah,” said Adam quietly. “That part I don’t understand. You knew how bad it was down there. Did you even look for me?”

Sam could not look at his little brother as he answered.

“I didn’t have to look for you; I knew exactly where you were. But I looked for ways to get you out, and Dean was looking for a year before I even started. I couldn’t bear the thought of you staying down there, especially after I got to know you. But there was nothing, not _anything_. And…I didn’t want to mess with the Cage. I’d already freed Lucifer once; I couldn’t do it again.”

The excuse felt weak even to Sam when it left his lips. He was disgusted with himself. How did he manage to keep failing his brothers so spectacularly?

“If there was nothing you could do, there was nothing you could do,” Adam said softly after a moment. Sam appreciated the fact that Adam was trying to move past it, but he had to still have questions and doubts. Frankly, Sam was amazed that Adam did not outright hate him.

“But that’s just the thing,” said Sam, turning abruptly to face his brother. “That’s what I told myself after I couldn’t find anything. I told myself that there was nothing I could do, that it was okay for me to stop looking because there was nothing to find. But then you showed up. You got out. So clearly there was something to be done, and I didn’t find it. Who knows how many decades, how many centuries of hell I could have saved you from if I had looked harder?”

“But who knows how many lives it would have cost if you accidentally freed the devil again?” Adam countered. “Look Sam, I won’t pretend that I think you’ve done everything perfectly, but I do know that you’ve done the best that you could. What else can I expect from you?”

“I guess I just wish that you could expect more,” murmured Sam.

“I think we all wish that about ourselves,” said Adam wryly.

“Maybe you’re right.”

“I have been right on rare occasions.”

Sam respected the attempt at humor, and decided to let the subject drop. He had not forgiven himself, and he could not dare to hope that Adam was as nonchalant as he claimed, but he knew that no more progress would be made with this particular discussion.

“I guess this is pretty different from our first conversation, huh?” said Adam abruptly.

Sam glanced at him and grinned.

“Yeah, you weren’t at your best that day,” he admitted.

“You can say it Sam; I was a whiny ass.”

“Nah, I wouldn’t say you were whiny. You were working more of a snarky angst angle.”

They both chuckled, and a companionable silence fell. Until the plane hit its next patch of turbulence.

“Okay,” said Adam though gritted teeth. “I may be able to get past you leaving me in hell, but this plane ride is 100% your fault, and I intend to kill you for it when we land.”

ooooooooooooooooo

Adam did not carry out his death threat as the two brothers left the airport in their rental car, but he did deliver a very solid punch to Sam’s arm.

“I see your shoulder is feeling better,” said Sam as he rubbed the sore spot, keeping one hand on the wheel.

“Yeah, your nursing skills are top-notch.”

“Well, we hunters know how to take care of injuries.”

“I guess so.” Adam trailed off into silence. Sam glanced down at him in concern, recognizing his brooding tone.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked gently.

“I’m not a hunter, Sam,” he replied.

“I know that,” Sam said quickly. “I didn’t mean-”

“I know what you meant,” Adam interrupted. “And I know you wouldn’t force me into being one. But what’s left for me, Sam? After everything that I’ve been through, everything that I’ve learned, how am I supposed to go back to normal life? And how am I supposed to ignore what’s going on in the world around me, and in my own family? The angels have fallen, and you guys are going to need all the help you can get.”

Sam glanced at Adam and then back to the road. He could not argue with what the other man was saying, but he did not want to see his little brother get pulled into the bloody chaos that was their family. When he and Dean had first met the ghoul that they thought was Adam, Sam had been the one who wanted to train their brother, to get him ready for the hunt. He remembered being frustrated that Dean wanted to shelter Adam, to keep him away from the danger. But now he would have given anything to do the same thing.

“Adam…” he began, but he was cut off again.

“Look, I’m not making any decisions yet, it’s just something to think about,” said Adam. “I don’t have any illusions about the life of a hunter, but I also don’t have any illusions about how bad things are right now, and how necessary every single person is.”

“I guess I’m not arguing with you,” said Sam slowly. “It’s your choice. I would be lying if I told you that you wouldn’t be useful, but you deserve more Adam. You should be able to live the life that you want.”

“So should you,” said Adam, eyebrows raised. “And yet you’re still here, fighting evil instead of law suits.”

“Same thing, right?” asked Sam jokingly. But he could not help thinking about what he had been forced to give up more recently than his law career. He still missed Amelia, and he did not want Adam to ever have to make a decision like he had. But Adam was already part of the supernatural world, and no matter what he tried to do to get out, he would never really be free…Thoughts chased themselves in circles around Sam’s mind.

“So what’s the address again?” he asked abruptly, wanting to focus on the task at hand. Adam read it off the piece of paper that Dean had given him, and then glanced thoughtfully up at Sam.

“I know you’re still not a huge fan of this plan,” he said to his older brother.

Sam grimaced. This was just going to be a day of difficult conversations, wasn’t it?

“I just don’t want to see Dean get hurt,” he said eventually. “You weren’t there when Emma was on earth Adam, you didn’t see what she did to Dean.”

“She said you killed her before she could do anything to him,” said Adam, confused.

“I don’t mean physically. If you say she doesn’t want to kill us, fine; I trust your judgment. I’m talking emotional damage. Dean wouldn’t admit it, but he cared about Emma, and her death really got to him.”

“Then why is getting her back a bad thing?”

“Because he got over it. He moved on. But when we go through with this, if he really lets himself get close to her and she lets him down…Dean’s had too many people let him down in his life, and I’m not sure how much more of it he can take.”

“She won’t let him down,” said Adam firmly.

“I hope you’re right Adam, I really do. Because believe it or not, it bothered me when I had to kill her. Yeah, she was a monster, but she was family. Don’t think I take that lightly.”

“I don’t,” said Adam quietly.

Sam looked over at him again. He guessed his little brother knew how much family mattered to him.

_It was the worst when the archangels let them believe they had a chance. Sam had honestly thought that Lucifer had been careless enough to leave one of his chains loose, allowing him to wriggle free after some effort. He took a moment to stretch, relishing the lack of bonds. Then he crept to the door of his cell, the appearance of which changed daily. That day it happened to be the motel room from their job at the Broward County Mystery Spot, when he had been forced to watch Dean die over and over, always helpless, always waking up later to that same damn song. He had been sick of that room after two days, but after a hundred it had nearly driven him insane. Clearly the devil knew that, because the room seemed to pop up with alarming regularity in the hell that he had created specially for Sam._

_Sam slipped out of the door, walking down the dank hallway outside until he came to the next door. Knowing what had to be behind it, he pushed it open, revealing Adam, who had been pinned to the wall like a butterfly to a card. Sam ran to his side, carefully sliding his brother off of the steel spikes on which his shoulders were impaled._

_“Sam?” Adam asked hopefully. It was still early enough in their time in hell for them to have hope._

_“I got loose,” Sam told him, wiping away the dribble of blood that was leaking from the corner of the younger man’s mouth. “Can you walk?”_

_When Adam nodded, Sam grabbed him by the arm and pulled him out into the hallway. The two of them set off at a run, Adam gasping from the pain in his chest, following the twists and turns of the dark corridor without seeing any sign of an exit. Flaking wallpaper turned into grimy cinderblock turned into rough stone. Suddenly they began to hear crazed, keening sounds from behind them. They turned, and Sam’s stomach dropped._

_The first two times they had made escape attempts like this they had been pursued by hellhounds, but today…today it was Croats. There were dozens of the sickening zombies chasing them, and despite what numerous crappy horror films claimed, those suckers were not slow and meandering. They were fast, deadly fast, and they were gaining on the brothers._

_“Go!” shouted Sam, pushing Adam ahead of him. He knew that he would be scant protection when the Croats caught up with them, but it made him feel better to be able to guard his little brother’s back for just a little while longer. The two of them ran for another minute before Sam spotted a small alcove tucked high up in one of the walls. He glanced back, hearing the cries of the rabid pack of pursuing zombies, then looked forward to Adam, and made his decision. He yanked his brother to a halt._

_“Sam, what-?”_

_“Get on my shoulders.”_

_“Why?” asked Adam as he complied._

_“See that little hole up there?”_

_“Yeah.”_

_“Hide in it,” said Sam as he pushed up on Adam’s feet to help him reach the safety of the alcove. “They won’t be able to reach you up there.”_

_“Wait, what about you?” asked Adam urgently when he realized that Sam was not going to follow him. Sam glanced up at him and smiled._

_“I’ve got longer legs than you. It’ll take them more time to catch me.”_

_“Yeah, more time, but not enough time. Sam, they’ll rip you to pieces.”_

_As if Sam didn’t know that._

_“Watch out for yourself Adam. If you see a chance to get out of here, take it. If not, hide as long as you can. Don’t worry about me.”_

_He began to run towards the sounds of the approaching swarm of Croats, determined to keep them away from his brother’s hiding place. He turned a corner and there they were, a dozen sets of frenzied eyes fixed on him. He began sprinting down another hallway, hoping to draw the creatures as far away from Adam as he could. He could hear them gaining on him with every step, and then finally he felt a choking tug as one of them caught him by the back of the jacket, bringing him to a jarring stop._

_Sam closed his eyes, knowing that it was useless to fight unarmed against so many of them. The Croats began to tear into him, ripping him to shreds one chunk of flesh at a time with their fingernails and teeth. Sam’s last coherent thought before he succumbed to the hurricane of agony was the hope that Adam would have the chance to find some way to get free._

_The next day, Sam woke to the sight of Lucifer’s smiling face bending over him and the sound of his little brother’s screams echoing from the next room._

_“Sam!” Adam shouted, the anguish clear in his voice. “Help me! Please! Sam!”_

“Sam?”

He was jarred out of the memory by Adam’s hand on his shoulder, shaking him roughly.

“You okay, man?”

Sam shook his head, trying to clear it. He glanced around them and saw that he had managed to pull over to the side of the road. He put a trembling hand over the one that Adam had left on his shoulder, reassuring himself that his brother was there, safe.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said when he could use his voice again. “I just, uh, had a flashback.”

“I thought Cas fixed those,” said Adam, his voice full of concern.

“I thought so too. This is the first one I’ve had since then.”

He rubbed his face, still struggling to ground himself. His whole body was shaking, and he could feel his shirt sticking to him from the sweat.

“Do you think I triggered it?”

Sam looked sharply at Adam, who looked guilty and scared.

“It’s not your fault, Adam,” he said firmly. “Whatever it was, I’m sure it won’t happen again. And if it does, I can handle it.”

Adam looked like he was about to argue, but apparently Sam’s face convinced him that it would be useless. So he went with a different line of questioning.

“So what did you see?” he asked.

“It doesn’t matter.”

Adam continued to stare at him pointedly. Sam knew how stubborn the man could be.

“Croats,” he said with a sigh. “The first time.”

Adam winced and looked away. Sam said nothing else, he just steered the car back onto the road and kept driving. They were both silent for the next fifteen minutes, until Adam spotted the sign for the correct cemetery.

“Huh,” remarked Sam as he and Adam surveyed the sprawling green hills in front of them. It was an extremely peaceful, beautiful place.

“What?”

“I can see why Dean brought her here. This is one of the nicest cemeteries I’ve seen, and trust me, I’ve seen a lot.”

Adam raised his eyebrows, but made no comment.

“Dean said that he buried Emma in the western corner, under the biggest tree,” said Sam, looking around and trying to figure out which of the towering trees was the largest.

“Yeah, finding her is not gonna be a problem.”

Sam looked down at his brother, worried about the strange new tone of his voice. Adam was cradling his arm as though it were hurting him.

“Why’s that?” Sam asked.

“I can feel her now,” replied Adam, his face pinched with pain. “Benny said that I would be able to sense where her body is. I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I most definitely do now.”

He strode off across the grass, Sam following with the shovel.

“Here,” he said, pointing to a patch of slightly darker green at the base of a tree. Carved into the trunk of the towering pine was the name ‘Emma’, and under that was simple pentagram, a symbol of protection against evil. Sam smiled slightly, surprised at Dean’s gesture. Emma must have made a bigger impact on him than Sam had realized.

Adam’s shoulder wound meant that Sam was on his own for the digging. It had been a while since he had exhumed a body, and his muscles did not let him forget it. But finally he managed to expose his niece’s skeleton. He hauled himself out of the pit that he had created, and beckoned Adam to the edge.

“You remember the words Dean told you?” asked Sam as he pulled his knife out of his pocket.

Adam nodded, rolling up his sleeve to expose the glowing skin under which Emma’s soul resided. He clenched his fist, holding his arm over the grave as Sam gave him a shallow cut. He groaned in pain as luminous red liquid began to drip from his arm and onto the exposed bones. He seemed distracted by the sensation, so Sam gave him a gentle nudge.

“Anima corpori,” Adam said, remembering. “Fuerit corpus. Totem resurgent.”

Adam fell to his knees as the last of the light and liquid left his arm.

“Adam?” asked Sam in concern as he caught his little brother.

“I’m alright. I’d just really like to never to that again.”

“Well, hopefully you won’t have to,” said Sam, helping Adam to his feet.

“Did it work?” Adam asked.

He and Sam peered into what had once been Emma’s grave. There was no sign of the young Amazon.

“I’m not su-” Sam began, but he was cut off by a voice from behind him.

“Well that took you long enough.”


	9. Chapter 9

Emma took great satisfaction in watching her two uncles almost jump out of their skins before whirling to face her.

“Emma?” Adam asked hesitantly

When she smiled, he ran forward and threw his arms around her. Emma stiffened, unused to contact that was not hostile. But then she forced herself to relax and return the embrace. She had never been hugged before. She found it to be an enjoyable experience. It was over quickly though, Adam pulling back and gripping her by the shoulders so that he could examine her carefully.

“Are you okay?” he asked urgently. “Last time I saw you, you were…”

“Choking on my own blood? Yeah, that was the least fun I’ve had in a while. But I’m fine now.”

She looked around, taking in the graveyard that they were standing in. It was a beautiful place, for all that it was full of dead people.

“Looks like you managed to get us out of Purgatory.”

“Yeah. Welcome back, I guess.”

“Thanks. You sure took your sweet time though.”

“I popped out of Purgatory in _Maine_ ,” said Adam indignantly. “Do you have any idea how far Maine is from Seattle? I had to hitch-hike to South Dakota, take a bus to Kansas, and then take a plane here, which I am never doing again by the way. Oh, also, I got shot. So I’m sorry if it took a few days longer than you were expecting, warrior princess.”

Emma laughed at his annoyance, but then the entirety of what he had said sank in.

“Wait, you got shot? Who shot you?”

Adam cleared his throat uncomfortably.

“It doesn’t matter.”

Emma stared at him for a moment. He seemed alright now, so the wound could not have been that bad, but she still did not like the idea of him getting hurt. The sound of another throat being cleared disrupted Emma’s thoughts.

“Oh yeah…I guess you two remember each other,” said Adam as Sam stepped forward with a hesitantly. He looked much older than the last time Emma had seen him, even though it had only been a couple years ago. There was a new weight in his eyes, which were underlined by dark shadows.

He looked very guarded, and seemed unsure of what to say to her, and the feeling was mutual. But someone had to break the silence.

“It’s good to see you again, Sam,” she said, extending her hand. Her uncle raised his eyebrows in disbelief. Emma grinned wryly, understanding the source of his doubt.

“Really,” she insisted. “No hard feelings. I was trying to kill your brother; I understand why you shot me. But do it again and we might have a problem, okay?”

Sam smiled slowly, finally taking her hand and shaking it firmly.

“Sounds fair, as long as it goes both ways,” he agreed. “Welcome back, Emma.”

“Thanks.”

She held onto his hand for a moment, looking up at him thoughtfully. She could tell that there were still trust issues there, but she supposed that she deserved that. Hell, she was having trouble forgetting the sight of him pulling the trigger on the gun pointed at her chest. But her uncle seemed honestly willing to give her a chance, and that was all she needed.

“Um, speaking of your brother, is Dean okay?”

Emma had only been expecting to see Adam when she woke up, but since Sam was there too, her father’s absence worried her. It had seemed like the Winchester brothers came as a matched set.

“Oh yeah, he’s fine,” said Adam quickly. “Remember that plane ride I mentioned? Apparently he’s as much of a sissy as I now am when it comes to air travel. But listen Emma, things have changed a little.”

“Okay,” said Emma dubiously, not sure where this was going.

“I know we said that when we got out we would try to start new lives; travel, see the ocean, all that.”

“Yeah…”

“Well, a few days after I got back to earth, the angels fell. All of them were expelled from heaven and exiled here. So basically the world is up shit creek and it needs all the paddles it can get.”

Emma stared at her uncle, one eyebrow raised.

“So you want to be a paddle?” she asked. Adam made a face.

“Uh, yeah I guess so. Look, what I’m saying is that I can’t go with you. My brothers need me, so I’m staying with them to try to help them fix…the world. But you can still do all that stuff, you can go anywhere, you can-”

Emma stopped his rambling with a raised hand.

“Adam Milligan, what do you think I am?” she asked, her tone dangerous.

“Um, you seem to be a bit pissed, at the moment.”

“I’m an Amazon, Adam. That means I’m a warrior. It’s not just what I am, it’s who I am. So if this world needs people to fight for it, sign me up. And you know what else being an Amazon makes me? Loyal. Not to those bitches who kicked me out, but to you, my real family. I’m not going to bail out on you when you need me.”

She turned to Sam.

“That going to be a problem, Sasquatch?” she asked. Her uncle blinked, surprised.

“I guess not,” he said bemusedly.

They spent the next twenty minutes filling in Emma’s grave, before setting off to the car. Halfway through the cemetery however, Sam grasped Emma’s arm gently, holding her back. Adam paused, staring searchingly at the two of them, then shrugged and continued on. Emma turned to Sam questioningly.

“Look,” he said, “I appreciate what you said back there, about being a warrior, and loyalty, and all, but…”

“But, you still don’t think that I can be trusted, because I’m a monster,” finished Emma.

Sam looked a little uncomfortable.

“It’s not that you’re an Amazon, and if Adam says that we can trust you, then I believe him.”

“Then what?”

“I just want you to know what you’re getting yourself into.”

“I can handle myself in a fight.”

“That’s not what I meant. Our family; it’s pretty messed up. We’re all barely hanging on. And if you want to join us, you’re going to have to commit, completely. There’s no halfway with us. There can’t be.”

Emma met her uncle’s gaze steadily.

“I understand,” she told him. “Look, I know what I did. And I don’t expect you to like me; hell, I don’t know you well enough to like you either. But after meeting Adam, I think I know what family means. And I want that. I want to get to know you and my dad, I want to be able to rely on you, and have you rely on me. So yeah, I’m committed. One hundred percent.”

“Okay then,” said Sam, appearing to be satisfied. “Glad to have you aboard.”

Emma returned the smile and the two of them began walking again.

“You know,” said Sam thoughtfully when they reached the rental car. “Just because you’re staying with us, doesn’t mean you can’t go see the ocean. We are on the coast, after all.”

Emma looked at him, hardly daring to hope that he meant what she thought he did.

“Are you serious?” she asked.

“Well, it seems like the ideal opportunity, doesn’t it? We’re headed for Kansas, and the beaches there are pretty crappy. And by that I mean they don’t exist. This will be your last chance to go to the ocean for a while.”

“Then I’d like that,” said Emma quietly. The partner that she’d had before she met Adam had been from the coast of California, and she had talked about the sea so often that Emma had started to dream about it at night. It was what she had most been looking forward to about getting back to earth.

“Ocean okay with you, Adam?” Sam checked.

“Hell yeah. I’ve never seen it either.”

“Seriously?” asked Sam. “Well then today is the day to right some wrongs.”

ooooooooooooooooo

Sam watched with a small smile as his brother and niece chased each other through the surf. He had never seen Adam look so young and carefree. It was bittersweet though, because he knew from Adam’s conversation with Emma that he had decided to stay and fight with the Winchesters, which meant that ‘carefree’ would probably never be an adjective that could be used to describe him again.

As for Emma herself…Sam did not know what he had been expecting from her. More anger, he supposed, or at least a little resentment. But the Amazon had seemed so willing to forget that Sam had taken her life, to move on and work at being a family. Sam guessed that he should not have been surprised. If Emma was half the person her father was, she was good and brave and loyal and worth knowing. She deserved the chance that he was giving her.

Sam’s cellphone began to ring, startling him out of his contemplation. He glanced at the number before answering and holding the phone to his ear.

“Hey, Dean.”

“How’d everything go?” his older brother asked.

“Fine. We found out that Adam likes planes about as much as you do, but other than that, everything went smoothly. Emma’s fine.”

“Good. That’s good.” Dean paused uncertainly. “Sammy, what’s she like?”

“Actually, she reminds me a lot of you. She’s seems like a good kid, Dean. I think you’ll like her.”

“What do you mean? I thought she was taking off after she got her body back; travelling the world, and all.”

“Yeah, that’s what we thought too,” said Sam. “Apparently she had other ideas. When I said she was a lot like you, I meant it. She doesn’t want to bail on her family, and neither does Adam.”

“Are you serious?” asked Dean. “She’s coming home?”

Sam realized how much Emma still mattered to her father. He had no doubt that Dean was going to be an amazing dad, if Emma let him. He was glad with the answer he was able to give.

“They both are, man. That bunker is going to be full.”

Sam chuckled suddenly.

“What?” asked Dean.

“Dude, your kid just shoved Adam into the ocean.”

“That’s my girl.” Sam could hear the smile in Dean’s voice. “Hey Sammy?”

“Yeah?”

“Hurry back, okay?”

ooooooooooooooooo

“Hey Sam?” asked Emma once they were all dry and back at the car.

“Yeah?”

“Since we’re not going to be flying back-”

“Thank god for that,” muttered Adam.

“This seems like the perfect opportunity for me to learn how to drive,” she finished hopefully.

Sam glanced at her and grinned.

“I don’t think so, kiddo,” he told her. “That’s gonna be your dad’s headache, not mine. Besides, you are nowhere near sixteen years old yet.”

Emma rolled her eyes but got into the backseat without further complaint. She enjoyed the first part of the drive back to Kansas, watching the scenery change in front of her. She had only ever seen the suburbs of Seattle and the forests of Purgatory, so the difference was welcome. But she did not think that any landscape would ever amaze her as much as the ocean had. It had been more impressive than she had imagined, and Sam and Adam had had to drag her away from it when the time came.

But as the hours stretched on and they drew closer and closer to the bunker in Kansas, Emma grew more nervous. She was eager to see her father again, but she was worried about how he would react, and what she would say to him. The only time she had ever met the man, she had tried to kill him. What if he hated her? What if he was disappointed that his daughter was a monster? She knew that it was pointless to worry, but ever since she had met Adam in Purgatory, she had started to care more about everything, especially her family.

The sky grew steadily darker, and Emma was so caught up in her concern that she did not even notice when they came to a stop on a deserted drive next to a door set into the base of a hill. Her stomach flipped when she realized that there was a figure standing outside of the door, waiting for them. There was only one person it could be.

She climbed out of the car in a semi-daze. She could hear Sam and Adam getting out behind her, but they hung back, letting her approach her father on her own. He came up to meet her, and they stopped a few feet away from each other. Dean cleared his throat.

“Hi Emma,” he said with a nervous smile.

“Hi Dean,” she replied. As she had feared, she did not know what to say next. She gave it her best shot though. “Um, I’m sorry I tried to kill you.”

Dean surprised her by chuckling.

“Don’t worry about it,” he told her. “Just, do me a favor, and don’t try it again?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” she said, laughing as well.

Dean closed the gap between them with a few steps and enveloped her in a gentle hug.

“I’m glad you’re staying with us,” he said softly into her ear. He smelled nice, like coffee and aftershave and something else that was harder to define, but felt like home.

“Me too,” Emma replied as they separated. And she was. This warm feeling of acceptance was vastly different, but so much better than anything she’d had with the Amazons or in Purgatory.

“And, uh, you can call me ‘dad’,” he said nervously, quickly adding, “only if you want to though.”

Could he really be afraid of her rejection? Impossible as that seemed to Emma, it looked to be the case. She smiled up at her father.

“Okay, Dad.”

Dean beamed. Sam and Adam walked up and Dean ruffled Adam’s hair and punched Sam affectionately on the arm, before the four Winchesters entered the bunker together. Emma was still not entirely sure what to expect, and she knew that what she had with her family was still new and fragile, but was certain that she could build on it, and she felt for the first time in her life that she was where she belonged.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this story, and thank you for reading. I really appreciate everyone who has left comments of kudos; they mean a lot to me. This fic is complete, but I will probably add a sequel at some point.


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